The 'rock man' of Congress now faces the challenge of drinking political poison and becoming an election troubleshooter.
Delhi News Desk!!! No matter how many adverse comments are made about personality-centric elections in the electoral politics of the country, both the parties and the opposition cannot deny the reality of 'personality cult' in elections. Satraps also play an important role in the fight for supremacy in national politics and DK Shivakumar in Karnataka is one such face who is a boon for the electoral prospects of the Congress. Shivakumar, who holds the dual responsibility of Karnataka's Deputy Chief Minister as well as State Congress President, is being counted as the new 'Rock Man' of the state politics, who has lifted the party from the streets even in difficult circumstances and taken it to the pinnacle of power in the state. Circumstances have led to this. Now it is a big challenge for this rockman of Karnataka to prove his political ability on the stage of national politics and live up to the expectations of Congress.
Poor performance in last elections
The 2024 election is a litmus test for DK Shivakumar, who has emerged as the new 'messiah' of the Vokkalinga community, Karnataka's second-largest after Lingayats, as the Congress's performance in the last two Lok Sabha elections has been disappointing and the party is set to take control of the state in 2019. Lost it. Only one seat out of 28 was safe. The national leadership of the party, which won a landslide victory with 135 seats in Karnataka in the April-May 2023 assembly elections, has similar expectations from DK in the Lok Sabha elections. But the reality is also that the BJP, torn by internal strife in the organization with the wave of corruption allegations in the assembly elections, has recovered and the fight before the Congress is more challenging.
Big hurdle in BJP's path!
The first glimpse of this came from inside the party when half a dozen ministers of the Siddaramaiah government refused to contest the elections. To overcome this first hurdle in its aim of winning at least a dozen seats from Karnataka, DK has placed its bets on close relatives of these influential ministers to make the contest in the electoral arena a tough one. The results will tell how successful this will be, but it is certain that DK will become a major obstacle in the path of BJP's clean sweep. In the 2023 elections of Karnataka, the JDS leader snatched the leadership of the Vokkalinga community from the former PM HD Deve Gowda family for three decades and temporarily ended the JDS factor in the state for three decades and to save the existence of the Deve Gowda family. Now in BJP's shelter
Lagging behind in the race for Chief Minister
Well, it is no less interesting that in 2020 the party won the elections under the leadership of Shivakumar, who was made the Karnataka Congress President as the choice of Sonia and Rahul Gandhi, but he lost the race for the Chief Minister's post. The biggest face of the OBC state, the legendary Siddaramaiah. I lagged behind. But on the basis of trust of Congress leadership and party workers, he is still considered ahead of Siddaramaiah.
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Shivakumar, one of the richest politicians of Karnataka, is known as the 'Rock of Kanakapura' in his home constituency Kanakapura as a strong-willed leader. During the last six-seven years, even during the difficult times of arrests one after another by ED, CBI and Income Tax, he did not break down like other Congress leaders nor did he change his political stance.
have the confidence of the top leadership
The depth of his closeness to the top leadership is also indicated by the fact that Sonia Gandhi had met him during his detention in Tihar jail and when he came out on bail, DK became emotional while recounting the incident and asked him to visit Karnataka. I promised to give a gift of victory. Translated into reality. Shivkumar is the biggest trouble-shooter on this front for the Congress, which is facing the crisis of losing Rajya Sabha seats from the state power due to MLAs switching sides for the last decade after being out of power at the Centre. 2014. Despite having a huge majority in Himachal Pradesh, Congress lost the Rajya Sabha seat due to BJP's Operation Lotus, but meanwhile DK foiled such an attempt of JDS-BJP in Karnataka.
There are many examples of his success in securing Congress MLAs in safe resorts in the 2017 Rajya Sabha elections in Gujarat, from veteran Ahmed Patel's one-vote victory to saving Vilasrao Deshmukh's government in Jharkhand, Maharashtra. Obviously, the top leadership hopes that after recovering from the poison of challenges, Shivkumar will play the role of a big troubleshooter in the Lok Sabha elections this time too.
