Ending months of speculation and three years of power struggle between him and his deputy, D.K. Shivakumar over the top post, Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah resigned on Thursday (May 29). Betraying no sense of the unsavoury wrangling that had continued between the Karnataka Congress’ two tallest leaders, the duo put up a united front at a press conference on Thursday as Siddaramaiah himself announced his resignation. Siddaramaiah leaves the post as the state’s longest serving chief minister, and only the sixth to have occupied the chair more than once.Announcing his resignation, 77-year-old Siddaramaiah, a member of the Kuruba community, who is regarded as the state’s most powerful socialist leader after former chief minister D. Devaraj Urs, said that “without the Constitution” he would be grazing sheep or ploughing fields. Later in a post on X, Siddaramaiah invoked B.R. Ambedkar again and wrote:“As someone who was born and brought up in a small village, I had never imagined that one day I would become an MLA, a Minister, the Leader of the Opposition, and serve twice as the Chief Minister of Karnataka. A dream this big became possible only because of the Constitution written by Babasaheb Dr. B. R. Ambedkar.”“Buddha, Basavanna, Babasaheb Ambedkar, and Mahatma Gandhi have always shown me the path. Through my forty-eight years in public life, I have always tried to stand with honesty beside the poor, the oppressed, the neglected, and those who were denied opportunities in society. That is the greatest satisfaction of my life,” he added.The announcement on Thursday came two days after a meeting with the high command in New Delhi, when both Siddaramaiah and Shivakumar met leader of opposition Rahul Gandhi, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, amid buzz of a leadership change in the state. Photographs showed both Siddaramaiah and Shivakumar at the Congress office in New Delhi, portraying a sense of unity, as opposed to the tussle that played behind the scenes over a never officially announced tenure sharing agreement after the Congress came to power in Karnataka in 2023.Siddaramaiah and D.K. Shivakumar (Left), the new Chief Minister of Karnataka. Source: Ivan Pinto, All India Congress Committee and Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee social media, X/@bengapintoSiddaramaiah, seen as a mass leader credited with uniting the AHINDA (comprising minorities, backward communities and Dalits) as a block for the party that destabilised earlier political equations dominated by the powerful Lingayats and Vokkaligas, remained the first choice. But Shivakumar was the party veteran and organisational strongman who was largely credited with the election victory.When Siddaramaiah was made chief minister in 2023, the agreement was that he would hold office for 2.5 years, then make way for Shivakumar in a deal meant to assuage both leaders. With that period ending last year, pressure mounted and tensions rose between the two factions and the depth of the rift came into full public view. In December, the two leaders once again sought to display unity after Siddaramaiah visited Shivakumar’s residence for breakfast and said that the two will run the government “unitedly”.Asked at that time when Shivakumar will become the CM, Siddaramaiah had said, “When the high command says.”On Thursday, Siddaramaiah appeared to have answered the call of the high command when he said to reporters that he was directed to step down and that he acted without any pressure.“What pressure? I voluntarily resigned immediately after they asked me to,” he said.However, unlike his former counterpart in Bihar, Nitish Kumar, who, like him, had emerged as a part of the socialist rise during the anti-Emergency movement, and was earlier this year asked to vacate the chief minister’s chair to be accommodated in the Rajya Sabha, Siddaramaiah said he had declined such an offer.“The high command asked me to go to the Rajya Sabha. I declined it humbly. I am not interested in national politics. I will remain in state politics. The people have elected me for five years, and two years are still left. Till then, I will work for the people of Karnataka and for the people of my constituency,” said SiddaramaiahMuted exit against aggressive political careerFor political observers in the state, Siddaramaiah’s muted exit, however, goes against his political history in the state.Born in South Karnataka’s Siddaramanahundi village near Mysuru, Siddaramaiah tended to cattle as a child and only joined school after class 4. In an interview in 2019, he said that his parents did not admit him to the government school and till the fifth standard he was only learning folk dance. Later, he went on to study law and contested his first assembly election in 1978 from the Chamundeshwari segment from the Lok Dal and lost.He tasted electoral victory for the first time in 1983 as an independent. Later, he joined the Janata Party and the Janata Dal, where he developed a close relationship with H.D. Deve Gowda and built the Janata Dal (Secular) with him after the party split in 1999.He has represented Varuna three times after it was culled out of the Chamudeshwari seat. Before Varuna, he represented Chamundeshwari six times since 1983. He earned a reputation of being an honest, able administrator and holds the record of having presented 17 budgets as the state’s finance minister.However, through the course of his over four-decade-long political career, Siddaramaiah did not show the quiet demeanour that marked his exit from the chief minister’s post on Thursday.Whether it was in 1996, when he challenged the choice of J.H. Patel as chief minister and was instead made his deputy, or in 2004 when he demanded to be made chief minister again and challenged Dharam Singh’s elevation. In 2005 he was expelled from the JD(S) after he fell out with H.D. Deve Gowda who had then begun promoting his son H.D. Kumaraswamy. When he joined the Congress in 2006, there were already established leaders in the party. He fought to make his space as he was brought in seeing his ability to mobilise AHINDA. In 2023 he managed to edge out Shivakumar, who had been largely credited with the party’s victory in the assembly elections.An all-party delegation from Karnataka led by then Deputy Chief Minister Siddaramiah calling on then Prime Minister late Dr Manmohan Singh, in New Delhi, on August 24, 2004. Credit: Press Information Bureau, Government of India, GODL-India, via Wikimedia CommonsSenior journalist and author Sugata Srinivasaraju said that it is surprising that the transition has been so smooth.“He overstayed the time that was given to him because he started chasing records and wanted to surpass Devaraj Urs’s record as the longest-serving chief minister. He was planning to stay on as chief minister. His close aides, including his son (MLC Yathindra) had been saying that Siddaramaiah would remain chief minister for five years,” said Srinivasaraju.“So then why did he walk away so meekly? Does that mean his character has changed and he has listened to the high command, even though he has always challenged the high command? This makes one think of what is brewing, and if something has been left unsaid.”Statesman Balancing AHINDA politics with powerWhile the power transition now appears smooth, there are various factors at play.Through his career, Siddaramaiah has cultivated the image of a strong regional leader with mass appeal. Since his expulsion from the JD(S), he has tried to create a voting block called the AHINDA, comprising minorities, backward communities and Dalits, by addressing many of their problems in his tenure.“His legacy is that he is the last statesman of Karnataka,” said Pradhyumna Alanahalli, a close confidante of Siddaramaiah.“He remained the champion of AHINDA and his five-guarantee schemes had large resonance in rural Karnataka. The demands for leadership change were there from the Shivakumar camp and the high command handled it well. But the new leadership in the party and the state will have to retain that AHINDA faith.”AHINDA as a united block destabilised the erstwhile political equations, earlier dominated by the powerful Lingayats and Vokkaligas. Consequently, the BJP has sought to work amongst the dominant Lingayats, said to be 13-14% of the state’s population. The JD(S), now the BJP’s ally, on the other hand, has sought to hold sway on its traditional Vokkaliga base. With Siddaramaiah making way for Shivakumar, a Vokkaliga himself, the JD(S) too has been put in a conundrum.Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressing the Karnataka Lingayat Education Society Centenary Celebrations, in Belagavi, Karnataka on November 13, 2016. Credit: Prime Minister’s Office, GODL-India, via Wikimedia CommonsIn trying to create a consolidated AHINDA group, Siddaramaiah as a Kuruba leader (Kurubas make up around 7-9% of the state’s population), has also ensured that the less prosperous sections among Lingayats and Vokkaligas also get the benefits of welfare measures he initiated for a range of unprivileged caste groups.“His personal legacy is strong as he has consistently batted for social justice and most of the schemes he has introduced in both his terms have been for the poor downtrodden and marginalised,” said Krishna Prasad, senior journalist. “In an age of untrammelled capitalism and majoritarianism, no chief minister has spoken about the poor and backward classes as consistently as Siddaramaiah and more importantly acted upon it,” he said.Siddaramaiah’s flagship five guarantee schemes, while being hailed, have also come under criticism for their cost to the state exchequer, with Shivakumar himself saying in February that the schemes are a “burden” but that they would continue. His government’s moves to divert funds from the Scheduled Caste Sub-Plan and Tribal Sub-Plan (SCSP/TSP) – funds intended for asset creation and capacity building among Dalits – to finance the five guarantee schemes, has also come under fire.Siddaramaiah had advocated for a caste survey since the mid-1990’s. During his first tenure as chief minister in 2015, he became the first chief minister to order a caste survey. Though the report was prepared in two years, it was not presented. In his second tenure, the government ordered a new survey after objections from Vokkaliga and Lingayat leaders.Just a day before resigning, Siddaramaiah received the caste census report from the State Commission for Backward Classes. The News Minute has reported that the earlier report had faced opposition from within the Siddaramaiah Cabinet, notably from Shivakumar and Industries Minister M.B. Patil, who belong to the dominant Vokkaliga and Lingayat communities, respectively.While some are interpreting the move as a last act of defiance, Siddaramaiah has now successfully passed the buck to the next chief minister to table the report in the assembly, as well as put the focus on the party’s high command, as Gandhi continues to press for social justice and OBC representation in particular. Meanwhile, the Scheduled Castes Sub-Classification Act, 2025, approved in January, has also faced pushback for merging the most backward nomadic communities with relatively advanced Scheduled Castes.“In Karnataka, OBCs are a conglomerate of different castes with internal contradictions and do not fall into a single group like Vokkaliga and Lingayat and because of that, they are unable to exert political pressures to meet their demands. There has also been a strong anti-Siddaramaiah sentiment among non-Kuruba OBC groups, due to both omissions and commissions of his government and due to carefully cultivated anti-Siddaramaiah sentiments by dominant castes, mutts and opposition parties, which reflected in the 2024 Lok Sabha election results. Since the OBCs are not an organised political grouping in the state the Congress thinks it can manage the caste arithmetic with other positions in the cabinet,” said activist and columnist Shivasundar.Siddaramaiah’s outreach to minorities also took a hit in his second term. The Karnataka Hate Speech and Hate Crimes (Prevention) Bill, 2025, brought in amid growing communal tensions in Mangaluru and coastal Karnataka, also faced criticism from civil society groups for being excessive and potential misuse. The Bill, though passed, is yet to receive Presidential assent. The 2022 hijab ban by the then BJP government was also lifted only in May 2026, three years into Siddaramaiah’s term.In his second tenure, he also faced the cloud of corruption charges in connection with the alleged Mysuru Urban Development Authority (MUDA) land scam, in which a Bengaluru court gave him a clean chit in January.The way ahead“The image of the Congress party is already in the doldrums in the state. It’s not that BJP or JD(S) are doing any better, but Congress as a party of governance has failed completely in the last three years,” said Srinivasaraju.“With Shivakumar in place, it would give JD(S) sleepless nights on how to recalibrate as they have shared territories and even family rivalry, but for the Congress too, questions remain amid allegations of commission and corruption levelled by the BJP and on whether Shivakumar will focus on expanding his empire or on governance.”Ultimately as the state transitions from the Siddaramaiah era – a government led by a dominant leader from an underprivileged background – to one led by a longtime party loyalist and a leader known for his organisational muscle more than his mass appeal, questions remain about how the party recalibrates ahead of the 2028 assembly elections.For now, it may have managed to avoid a repeat of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, where it paid dearly for not tackling internal rifts. That Siddaramaiah emphasised in his parting statements that he will remain active in politics is also being seen as an indication that a second power centre may emerge in the state, despite his vacating the chief minister’s chair.“Both Shivakumar and Siddaramaiah are showing themselves as saviours of the party, but in different forms. One is speaking about capital, market, financing, network and organisation, while the other is talking about identity politics. A political party needs both to function,” said Srinivasaraju.