Daijiworld Media Network – Bengaluru (DC)

Bengaluru, May 24: Former Chief Minister Siddaramaiah is unlikely to take up the Congress top post as president of KPCC. The sources close to him say that Siddaramaiah is not keen on the post instead he will only continue as Congress Legislature Party leader and chairman of the coordination committee.

It may be recalled that the recent developments after the fractured verdict in Karnataka assembly polls has indicated a major shakeup in the Congress party.

While senior leaders like D K Shivakumar, G Parameshwara and M B Patil and others were eyeing on posts of deputy chief minister as well as KPCC chief, there were reports that he could prove a stumbling block in the smooth functioning of the coalition government. The BJP and some of the Congress leaders who are not in good terms with Siddaramaiah had alleged that he would rock the boat demanding a top job.

His followers too were insisting to take up the post of KPCC president. However, he has brushed aside such pressures and advised his followers to identify more with the party than just with him.

However, sources close to him said, “He may make some political moves in future, which he is not opening up now. But his present frame of mind does not suggest that he will rock the boat, especially the one he is sitting in,"

Siddaramaiah is likely to take the future course of action based on his bitter decade- long battle with the Deve Gowda family and the treatment meted out by the ‘Gi Le Bi’ (Gowda, Lingayat and Brahmin) group during his administration

Sources further said, “He realised that his AHINDA movement and the way it was handled by people in the administration had created deep animosity among the upper class against him, including the Lingayats and Brahmins, who constitute a large section of the population in his home district of Mysuru. Since then he started worrying that his son, Dr Yathindra, would become a victim of this animosity and took the decision to field him from Varuna, risking his own political career in the process."