Newsmaker | D K Shivakumar: The architect who prepared the Karnataka Congress for victory

While his main rival for the post, former CM Siddaramaiah, is considered an astute politician in terms of caste politics and administration, it is largely the heads-down approach to electoral tactics and strategy which Shivakumar adopted – with the central leadership’s help – that delivered the results for the Congress.

Even when the BJP baited the Congress and tried to drag leaders like Siddaramaiah into verbal jousting on communal issues – which would play into the BJP’s hands — Shivakumar asked party leaders to keep their focus on real issues of the people.

“Siddaramaiah is a good politician but he is not very good at tactics and strategy or organising the party. The arrival of Shivakumar changed the situation and there was more focus on strategy and tactics. This helped transform the Karnataka Congress into a well-oiled unit instead of a disparate group with loyalties spread all around,” a young Congress MLA candidate said, ahead of the polls.

Tactics that Shivakumar adopted of a frontal attack on the perceived corruption in the BJP government by utilising the services of the state contractors’ association, among others, and the ‘PayCM’ campaign against Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai – through the advice of consultants like Sunil Kanagolu – paid dividends by capitalising on underlying public anger over inflation and the rising cost of living.

Shivakumar is also believed to have been at the heart of decisions like dissuading Siddaramaiah from contesting in two seats and the choice of several candidates against the preferences of other leaders.

The Congress was helped to some extent by the record of its previous government led by Siddaramaiah, which was seen to have provided a clean and pro-people governance, including a slew of populist schemes which were discontinued by the BJP government.

The Congress now faces the challenge of deciding on a CM between Shivakumar and Siddaramaiah, who were the local faces of the party for the polls. Some Congress leaders have indicated that the central leadership has proposed a power-sharing deal with the two leaders dividing time in the seat.

“There has been a proposal for Siddaramaiah to be the CM for two years and a subsequent term for Shivakumar. The Congress has to plan for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls as well on the basis of this victory. Alienating either of the leaders would be counter-productive,” said an associate of a senior Congress leader.

As early as July 2022, Shivakumar, who often uses the analogy of chess and football to describe political situations, made a move to indicate his presence in the race to be the Karnataka CM in the event of a Congress win in the 2023 polls.

Shivakumar, who lost out on being the Congress chief in 2017, said he had been playing football – a physical and contact game — when he should have been playing chess – a mind game.

Earlier, in July 2020, at a press event in Mysuru, Shivakumar said: “Time has come for the Vokkaligas (the dominant south Karnataka community to which he belongs) to elect a community leader after a gap of 18 years.” They should rally behind him, he said.

“Am I a sanyasi?” he retorted when pressed for his thoughts on becoming a future CM last year.

Shivakumar can be expected to claim credit for the Congress’s resounding performance in the Old Mysore region where the Congress is looking at winning more than half of the 64 seats, at the cost of the JD(S), which had won the majority of seats in 2018.

The Vokkaliga community, largely concentrated in south Karnataka and making up around 15% of the state’s population, has been a loyal vote base of former prime minister H D Deve Gowda and his son H D Kumaraswamy of the JD(S). The possibility of a Vokkaliga CM in Shivakumar is a message that appears to have struck home with the community.

Soon after Shivakumar played the Vokkaliga community card, Kumaraswamy retorted that it was impossible for him to become a CM while in the Congress.

During the campaign, both Shivakumar and Siddaramaiah repeatedly asserted that a decision on who would be CM would only come into play after the polls, and that the party leadership and elected MLAs would make the call.

There has incidentally been a long-standing demand in Karnataka for a Dalit to be made CM, and while it has been debated by political parties on public forums, it has never come to fruition. Congress national president Mallikarjun Kharge, who has been whispered about as also a CM contender, is a Dalit.

The one big concern for the Congress on the Shivakumar front is the corruption cases against him, including an ED chargesheet on money laundering charges over an amount of over Rs 8 crore, and a CBI probe over disproportionate assets. In 2017 Shivakumar and his associates were accused of income tax evasion to the tune of over Rs 300 crore, while Shivakumar himself was accused of evasion to the tune of Rs 34 crore.

The ED complaint accuses the Congress leader of generating “a huge amount of illegal and unaccounted cash” during his ministerial tenure.

The Income Tax probe started in 2017 accuses Shivakumar of concealing “unaccounted and illegal money” even as he has “active business concerns in the sectors of education, trust and real estate”.

In October 2020, the CBI filed an FIR against Shivakumar, based on the findings during IT searches in August 2017 on around 70 premises linked to him. The CBI alleged that Shivakumar had amassed Rs 74.93 crore of wealth disproportionate to known sources of income from April 2013 to April 2018, as energy minister in the Congress-led Karnataka government.

Shivakumar was arrested by the ED in September 2019 in connection with the money laundering case and was released on bail a month later. He became the KPCC chief in 2020.

In his nomination papers for the Assembly elections this time, Shivakumar declared wealth to the tune of Rs 1,214 crore. A large amount of this declared wealth accrues from the ownership of a mall in Bengaluru, according to his affidavit.