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by IANS |
Bengaluru, March 11 (IANS) Congress trouble-shooter D.K. Shivakumar was appointed as the new president of the party's Karnataka unit, an official said on Wednesday.
"Congress interim president (Sonia Gandhi) has appointed D.K. Shivakumar as president of the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC)," said party's general secretary K.C. Venugopal in a statement from New Delhi.
Party's state unit leaders Eshwar Khandre, Satish Jharkiholi and Saleem Ahammed are the party's working presidents in the southern state.
"Former chief minister Siddaramaiah will continue as the Congress Legislature Party (CLP) leader and opposition leader in the state legislative assembly."
MLC M. Narayanswamy and MLA Ajay Singh are the party's new chief whips in the state legislative council and assembly.
The appointments to the party's key posts came three months after Dinesh Gundu Rao resigned as KPCC president on December 9 owning moral responsibility to the party's defeat in the December 6 by-elections to 15 assembly segments across the state.
The ruling BJP won 12, while the Congress 2 and one by an independent (Sharat Kumar), who was in the saffron party but resigned for being denied ticket to contest from the Hoskote on the eastern outskirts of Bengaluru.
Kumar is the son of BJP's Lok Sabha member B.N. Bachhe Gowda from Chikkaballapur constituency, about 60km northeast of Bengaluru.
The by-elections were necessitated by the resignations of 14 Congress and 3 Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) legislators in July from the assembly seats, which led to the fall of the 15-month-old Congress-JD-S coalition government on July 23 after its chief minister H.D. Kumaraswamy lost the confidence motion he moved in the House on July 18, 2019.
Though Siddaramaiah also resigned from the CLP post for the poll debacle, the party leadership asked him to continue and also be the opposition leader in the assembly.
Shivakumar, 58, is the party's legislator from Kanakapura assembly segment in Bengaluru Rural district, about 50km southeast of the city.
The senior Congress leader was water resources minister in the last coalition government and held diverse portfolios in the previous Congress governments.
Shivakumar's younger brother D.K. Suresh is the party's Lok Sabha member in the Bengaluru Rural district.
As an ace trouble-shooter, Shivakumar rescued his party from many political crises in the southern state and hosted the party's loyal legislators from Gujarat in July-August 2018 at the behest of party's leader Ahmed Patel from the western state, who won by a whisker in the August 2018 Rajya Sabha by-election.
Shivakumar, however, was arrested and imprisoned in Delhi's Tihar jail in September 2019 in an alleged money laundering case by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and for allegedly hoarding unaccounted cash in unspecified crores at his residences in Bengaluru, New Delhi and Kanakapura.
As the grand-old party's mediator, Shivakumar attempted to prevent the fall of the coalition government by rushing to Mumbai for wooing back the 14 Congress rebels who resigned and reduced the party's strength in the assembly.
Besides Siddaramaiah and Rao, many party's leaders, including Mallikarjun Kharge, H.K. Patil and R.V. Despande congratulated Shivakumar for becoming the party's state unit president in these challenging times.
