BENGALURU: It began with a tweet from the official twitter handle of KPCC which said the State would be better governed if KPCC president DK Shivakumar became the Chief Minister.Soon after, a host of MLAs, including BZ Zameer Ahmed Khan, Akhanda Srinivasa Murthy and others, were chanting the “Siddaramaiah for CM” mantra.
A couple of weeks ago, Congress seemed split vertically with pro and anti-Siddaramaiah groups issuing statements against each other. The issue reached the party high command and AICC General Secretary in-charge of Karnataka Randeep Surjewala wrote a letter laying out guidelines that partymen should not make any statement about future leadership. After weeks of fire-fighting, some semblance of unity had returned. But now Mohammed Nalapad has stirred the dreaded subject again, saying if people vote for Congress, Shivakumar will be the next CM.
It is no secret that Nalapad is going to take over as State Youth Congress president on February 1, 2022 following the intervention of Shivakumar. While he won the KPYC president elections in January 2021, he was disqualified by a decision of the Youth Congress election commission which did not take into account 47,000 of his votes. While Nalapad and his supporters threatened to fight back, Shivakumar intervened and stood by Nalapad.