Is it endgame for Siddaramaiah? A tough legal battle awaits the Karnataka CM

Is Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah who is embroiled in the MUDA site allotment scam on the last leg of his tenure? All eyes are on the Karnataka High Court, which, on August 29, will hear the CM’s petition challenging Governor Thawar Chand Gehlot’s sanction order (dated August 17) to prosecute him in the MUDA case. The high court has deferred all proceedings against the CM (based on three separate private complaints) in the special court for elected representatives till the next hearing, giving the CM the breather. However, Siddaramaiah is battling a silent political war within his party even as he is bracing for a tough legal battle. 

The opposition BJP and the JDS have upped their ante against the chief minister, demanding his resignation on moral grounds, but what is more worrying for the 77-year-old veteran is the party high command’s studied silence on the issue. Preempting an awkward situation, Siddaramaiah held a cabinet meeting followed by the Congress Legislature Party to prove he still enjoys the confidence of his cabinet colleagues and all the legislators. 

On Friday, both the chief minister and his deputy D.K. Shivakumar rushed to Delhi uninvited, and went into a huddle with AICC chief Mallikarjun Kharge, leader of opposition Rahul Gandhi, AICC general secretaries K.C. Venugopal and Randeep Singh Surjewala to apprise them of the political situation in the state. 

Once the meeting was over, Surjewala who took the lead and addressed the media slammed the governor calling him a “puppet” and a ragdoll” of the BJP and dubbed his sanction order as “illegal and unconstitutional”. 

“Frustrated by a decimating defeat, the prime minister, the home minister and the entire BJP leadership are now hiding behind a ragdoll governor to attack the Congress government of Karnataka. This is not just an attempt to dislodge or destabilize the Congress comment of Karnataka but in truth as all of us in the AICC are aware of, this is a sinister design to attack the five Congress guarantees where by which we are transferring over Rs 53,000 crore every year, directly, transparently, honestly in the bank accounts of over four crore our brothers and sisters and Karnataka,” said Surjewala, adding that the BJP was scared of the success of poll guarantees in Karnataka that were benefiting the SC, ST, Backward Classes, minorities and the poor among the general category. 

Kharge and Rahul Gandhi, who abstained from giving any public statement on the MUDA scam and the chief minister, were conspicuous by their absence even at the press meet. While Surjewala’s words did little to comfort the chief minister who had hoped for the party leadership to defend him as an “untainted” leader. 

By the end of the press meet, Surjewala stated that BJP’s efforts to destablise the government was not an attack on the chief minister, DCM or the state government but an attack on people of Karnataka by the Narendra Modi government drunk with power that’s using the “puppet Governor” to destabilise an elected government.

Referring to Siddaramaiah, a Kuruba strongman, who is also one of the last few mass leaders of Karnataka (like H.D. Devegowda and B.S. Yediyurappa), Surjewala said “This (sanction order) is also in assault on a backward class chief minister who is now the senior most chief minister in the country. This is not a personal attack on him, but revenge seeking by the BJP and JDS against people of Karnataka (for electing Congress).”

The Congress high command is certainly watching the HC proceedings closely as the verdict, either way, will pose a plethora of challenges for the party ahead of the four-state polls.  

Siddaramaiah will be off the hook if the High Court quashes the sanction order. However, if the HC allows prosecution, it will be end of the road for Siddaramaiah as the special court could order probe by the state police and propriety demands the chief minister to relinquish his post to pave the way for a fair probe. In case the court refers the case to the CBI, Siddaramaiah might initially choose to face the probe without stepping down (like Arvind Kejriwal) but eventually choose to resign to avoid embarrassment to the party. 

In both scenarios, an ugly leadership squabble is inevitable as the party is riddled with factionalism and has a a long list of CM contenders—inluding D.K. Shivakumar (Vokkaliga), Kharge(Dalit), Home minister G Parameshwara(Dalit), MB Patil (Lingayat) and Satish Jarkiholi (ST). Most of the CM hopefuls are not vote-catchers like the incumbent CM, who currently enjoys the confidence of a majority of the legislators. 

The Congress leadership is certainly treading with caution as the corruption charges against Siddaramaiah have cropped up at a time when Rahul Gandhi, as the LOP,  is proclaiming zero tolerance to corruption. More importantly, the Congress is wary of antagonizing Siddaramaiah, who holds sway over the Ahinda vote-bank of the party. In the 1980s, the politically dominant and numerically strong Lingayat community drifted away from the Congress towards BJP soon after Veerendra Patil, a Lingayat leader, was unceremoniously removed from the CM’s post. This was a lesson which no political party in Karnataka could afford to forget. 

Decades later, the saffron party went through a similar challenge when it replaced Lingayat strongman B.S. Yediyurappa with another Lingayat leader Basavaraj Bommai as the CM. Yet, the party lost its ground in the Lingayat belt in both the Assembly polls (in 2023) and also in the Parliament polls last May.

For the time being, the Congress is likely to stand by Siddaramaiah to avoid a backlash from the dominant Kuruba community and also the Ahinda voters. Also, the party which takes pride in the “Karnataka model” of inclusive development as a counter to Modi’s development model, is keeping its fingers crossed hoping for a favourable court verdict. 

Finding a successor to Siddaramaiah, who can hold on to the sizeable Ahinda vote-bank is the next big challenge before the grand old party as BJP’s social engineering experiments is slowly but steadily eating into Congress’s OBC and Dalit vote-bank each election.