May 28, 2026 14:31 pm IST

Opinion | Siddaramaiah: The Man Who Has Never Believed In Bowing Out Quietly

Old habits die hard. Siddaramaiah is a grassroots socialist, an anarchist who has always thrived in chaos. Don't expect him to retire to a life of a quiet, elderly statesman - not yet, at least.

TM Veeraraghav TM Veeraraghav Columnist

TM Veeraraghav Columnist

In 2013, at the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee office, as the election results started pouring in, the answer to who would be Chief Minister was obvious to me. The then Leader of the Opposition, Siddaramaiah, was the socialist import who had taken over the Congress, and his raison d'être was to occupy the top post. He would have broken the party and sparked total anarchy had he been bypassed. That is why even Mallikarjun Kharge, the old warhorse of the Congress, did not stand a chance. Siddaramaiah remained the undisputed Chief Minister and power centre for five years - a rarity in Karnataka, a state that more often than not has seen mid-term replacements and bitter power tussles.

Even in 2018, after leading the Congress to defeat following his five-year term, Siddaramaiah remained belligerent. He had to be coaxed and pressured by the Congress central leadership into accepting an alliance with the Janata Dal (Secular) (JD-S) to install HD Kumaraswamy as Chief Minister, a move aimed solely at keeping the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at bay. He was fundamentally against the arrangement; he had exited the JD(S) in 2005 after a bitter feud with HD Deve Gowda to join the Congress. The moment the 2019 parliamentary elections concluded, Siddaramaiah witnessed - and perhaps helped engineer - the collapse of the alliance. The subsequent mass resignation of Congress and JD(S) MLAs - many of them Siddaramaiah loyalists - who........

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