The Waiting Game

ON JULY 15, a group of veteran Congress lead­ers assembled under the authoritative gaze of Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah. The first-ever two-day meeting of the party’s OBC Advisory Council in Bengaluru gave him a chance to deepen his old political-ideological line: AHINDA (minorities, backward classes and Dalits) as a vehicle of empowerment and not just poll arith­metic. He called for the caste census to be made a constitutional necessity, to implement private sector quotas amounting to 75 per cent reservation in state jobs and education that mark a per­manent expansion of the political imagination among backward classes. An agenda, he might have also added, that would entrench his salience in the state’s polity.

The chief minister’s call was at once rhetorical and a call to action, a reminder that he remains, if not the last of the old-style Mandalists, then certainly its most durable version in the South. He spoke not of representation as accommodation, but as power reclaimed from a structure that “erased” OBCs and “rigged the game at birth”. The subtext is unmistakable: if Congress fails to own this agenda, it risks ceding the terrain to BJP’s opportunis­tic overtures or the Janata Dal (S)’s local arithmetic. For now, Siddaramaiah remains the keeper of that flame. But as Delhi lis­tens and Deputy Chief Minister Shivakumar waits in the wings, the OBC Council meeting doubles as a political manoeuvre—so­cial justice here is not just policy but leverage in the simmering contest between Siddaramaiah and Shivakumar, the Vokkaligga strongman eyeing the top seat.

What makes Siddaramaiah difficult to remove is not his charisma or his governance metrics. An AHINDA architect, an economic populist adept in the art of redistribution and one of the only Congress leaders in the South whose authority derives as much from caste geometry as electoral performance, he has become a node in the party’s quest for a winning combination. In a national party increasingly reliant on upper-caste technocrats, Siddaramaiah represents an alternative lineage, one that Con­gress invokes selectively but cannot convincingly claim to own.

In 2015, under Siddaramaiah’s earlier term, the Karnataka government commissioned a Socio-Economic and Educational Survey, a caste census meant to recalibrate policy in line with de­mographic realities. It was completed, then buried. What leaked suggested a reordering: the dominance of Lingayats and Vokka­ligas had been numerically overstated. OBCs and minorities, long treated as appendages to the political core, appeared to be its majority. Lingayat leaders, including those within the Congress, dismissed the data as spurious. Vokkaliga groups threatened par­allel surveys. BJP framed it as manipulation. Earlier this year, the Congress government scrapped the report.

In its place, a new survey was announced, to be completed within 90 days, a bureaucratic timeline that belies its political urgency. The new enumeration is not just a technical correction; it is a soft referendum on who matters. If it confirms the leaked 2015 proportions, Siddaramaiah’s position becomes ideologically entrenched. If it elevates forward-caste numbers, it makes the case for succession by one of their own. Yet, given that a dramatic departure from the past findings is unlikely, the survey can deep­en the fault lines even as the conclusions could make it harder for the Congress high command to consider a change of guard.

The man best positioned to benefit from a succession is DK Shivakumar. Unlike Siddaramaiah, Shivakumar does not rely on symbolic capital. His power is logistical. He is the state party president, the Congress’s most effective fundraiser in Karnataka and the undisputed organiser in the Vokkaliga regions. Where Siddaramaiah leans on welfarism and backward mobilisation, Shivakumar traffics in discipline, mutt endorsements, infrastruc­ture visibility, and transactional loyalty. The contrast is stark.

At a recent event, when he asked people to take their seats, his comment—“Getting a chair is not easy. Once you have it, sit—even if it’s on a raft”—was interpreted as a veiled reference to the tussle between him and Siddaramaiah. That power, once claimed, must be held at all costs. His brother, DK Suresh, how­ever, has said Shivakumar is not in a hurry. “He is not under pres­sure. He is a loyal Congressman.” These are not denials. They are dodges. The intention is to normalise anticipation and make it a legitimate quest. Shivakumar himself has since refused to answer questions about when he will ascend the chief ministerial throne, and dismissed as rumour any imminent change in leadership.

Siddaramaiah’s own statements have shifted tone. He says there was no 50–50 rotational agreement, that the CM’s seat is not vacant, and that he will serve the full term. But the assertion itself is a signal: if the high command were fully behind him, it would not require restating. Congress has not announced any change. But the absence of reassurance from Delhi has been unsettling.

The state BJP has seized on the succession question, arguing that this has become an all-consuming issue for the ruling party at the expense of governance. Union minister Prahlad Joshi recently accused Congress of “horse-trading”, claiming that both camps were soliciting MLAs to secure numerical dominance in the event of a leadership contest. “Horses are ready for sale,” he said. But the party has not yet identified a counter-narrative. It retains its strong Lingayat roots, but its outreach to OBC groups has been uneven.

In Karnataka, caste defines everything from scholarship distri­bution to contractor licencing to seat reservation in panchayats. The categories—OBC, SC, ST, Lingayat, Vokkaliga—are not in­cidental to policy; they are the inputs that shape it. And yet, they are also increasingly volatile. The 2015 survey was attacked not because it was implausible, but because it upset a distributional consensus that has held for long. The dominant castes may not be the most numerous, but they were entitled to rule with benefits for others.

SIDDARAMAIAH DISRUPTED THAT consensus. But even his disruption required camouflage. His wel­fare schemes—Anna Bhagya, Ksheera Bhagya, Griha Lakshmi—were caste-neutral in design, but backward-class-skewed in uptake. His speeches on social justice do not dwell on percentages. They talk of dignity. Now, forced to confront the numerical logic directly, the party must choose whether to extend that disruption or contain it.

It must also rethink the strategy of playing victim. On July 14, in Sagar taluk of Shivamogga district, Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari inaugurated a long-pending highway project: `8,200 crore worth of roads and bridges, including a major crossing delayed for over half a century. The chief minister of Karnataka was not present. Nor was any cabinet representative from the state government—in fact, a min­ister, already well on his way to the event, was reportedly asked to return. The optics of skipping an event organised by the Union Ministry of Road Transport and Highways were unmistakable. The next day, Siddaramaiah made the snub formal. In a public letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he accused the Centre of violating protocol and disregarding the federal compact. The programme had gone ahead, he wrote, “despite the State Gov­ernment’s express disagreement”, with the Centre “choosing to assert arbitrariness and defy the spirit of co-operative federalism”. BJP countered with its own version of events: letters dated July 11 and 12 from Gadkari had invited Siddaramaiah to the event and offered him the option to attend virtually. These were not perfunctory gestures, the party insisted. The implication was clear: the boycott had been a choice, not an insult. For Delhi, it was a bridge long overdue. For Bengaluru, it was a line too often crossed. But while the Centre’s perceived slight played neatly into Siddaramaiah’s federalist script, events within the state were test­ing his government’s own compact with progress.

The Siddaramaiah government’s decision to scrap land acqui­sition for the Aerospace Park near Devanahalli airport, following sustained farmer protests, has sparked a sharp divide. To some, it is a recognition of agrarian voices in a rapidly urbanising cor­ridor. To others, it is a costly retreat, echoing the cautionary tale of Singur: a moment where development ambition buckled before political expediency. The land in question, proximate to India’s third-busiest airport, was part of a larger vision to make Karna­taka a hub for aerospace and defence innovation. Its rollback may shield the government from immediate confrontation, but the long-term perception of a state unsure whether to prioritise farm­ers or factories may linger.

Complicating matters is the spectre of an alleged land scam that runs counter to Siddaramaiah’s farmer-friendly persona. The Karnataka Lokayukta has named the chief minister and his wife in a probe over the “50:50” site allotment scheme under the Mysuru Urban Development Authority, meant to compensate landowners but allegedly misused for insider gain. The ED has attached over `400 crore in assets, citing benami deals, inflated valuations, and fictitious allottees. Fourteen high-value plots were linked to Siddaramaiah’s wife, and later surrendered under pressure. With BJP calling for a CBI probe and fresh irregularities surfacing, the fallout threatens not just the CM’s moral authority but Congress’s backward-class plank itself.

Even as the government fends off allegations that threaten to undercut its welfarist credentials, the party’s internal calculus is shifting. Siddaramaiah may speak in the idiom of regional griev­ance, but his deputy rehearses a different kind of arithmetic. If Shivakumar does not contradict him, it is because he does not need to. At recent gatherings, he has reminded audiences that Vokkaligas and Lingayats are also considered OBCs at the na­tional level. The message is folded into the facts: that his claim to the chair is not in opposition to the OBC project. On July 12, he departed for New Delhi—a second quiet visit in as many weeks. In Bengaluru, passing whispers framed the trip as a high-wire act: interface with the party high command, but without trig­gering overt alarm. Soon after his return, Shivakumar was asked again about the chief ministership. His response was swift and measured: “An answer has already been given… we don’t want to make any comment now,” he said, sidestepping speculation. The precision of his phrasing—brief, absolute—carries deliber­ate ambiguity.

Within Congress ranks, anxiety remains. Some MLAs, includ­ing Tanveer Sait, have openly backed Shivakumar: “Power is not permanent, change must happen.” Taken together—the Delhi visits, the disciplined denials, and the formulaic reminders—de­fine Shivakumar’s interim posture. He moves where he must, speaks when constrained and is tolerated by allies because he does not provoke. A certain ambiguity is his shield. In the mechanics of the Karnataka Congress, it preserves its challenge and does not appear overly confrontational.

Within Congress, there is precedent for mid-term course corrections. In Punjab, Captain Amarinder Singh was replaced by Charanjit Singh Channi in September 2021, projected as a move to promote Dalit support ahead of the 2022 Assembly polls. However, it was a poor compromise, and Congress lost the election as the leadership change failed to deliver electoral dividends. In ignoring the claim of the Jat Sikhs when Amarinder was being removed, Congress ended up adding wind to the sails of Aam Aadmi Party. In Chhattisgarh, the long-running Bhupesh Baghel–TS Singh Deo standoff was resolved in July 2023, when Singh Deo was appointed deputy chief minister in the months preceding the 2023 elections. In Rajasthan, Ashok Gehlot defused the Sachin Pilot rebellion but in doing so exposed deep internal fissures. These changes were not driven by ideology but by pure internal arithmetic.

THE OBC ADVISORY Council meeting, spread across July 15 and 16, was then a power statement. The party wants to project backward class cohesion, a Karnataka model to match Bihar’s. But this is Siddaramaiah’s turf even as the high command takes recourse to a familiar pattern: denial, delay, recalibration. The party has begun reviewing ministerial performance. Congress leader Randeep Surjewala has been in and out of the state. Every visit, every press conference, feeds speculation. If Congress intends to replace Siddaramaiah, it will likely wait until the caste survey is complete and the political cost recalculated. Removing the chief minister is risky as it can be read as a betrayal of the backward classes, and the party’s pro- OBC stance can be seen as a convenience, not a commitment. Waiting too long can mean the Shivakumar camp might be­come restive and resentful. The line between succession and fracture is fine. Congress has walked it before. Sometimes it makes it across. Sometimes it doesn’t.

For now, the two men continue as they are: one governing, the other accumulating. The MLAs count themselves again and again, looking for cues. BJP stirs the air with slogans. The survey progresses slowly, under a bureaucratic cloud. Senior Congress leaders have begun subtly shifting the narrative to match this complexity. A seasoned leader told Open that “the dwindling sup­port of forward as well as OBC groups is keeping many of us on our toes after BJP and JD(S) joined hands”. The party knows that to sustain cohesion, especially amid numbers-based anxiety, it must also make forward castes feel seen in the sweep of data. If not, the arithmetic may remain sound, but the logic breaks down. Congress must now demonstrate that it can govern diversity, not just count it. The survey, its fallout, and the meeting are all part of that test.

BJPCongressDK ShivakumarKarnatakaOBC Advisory Councilpoliticspower struggle. Siddaramaiah