‘Kharge for CM’ triggers furious debate

A couple of days ago, Congress strongman and Karnataka unit chief DK Shivakumar virtually dropped a bombshell saying he was all prepared to work under party national president Mallikarjun Kharge if he wished to become chief minister after the Assembly poll results are out on May 13. His remark was immediately interpreted as a move by many to stall former CM Siddaramaiah’s bid to become CM again if the Congress crossed the magical mark of 113 in the state Assembly.

Kharge is one of the best-known faces of the Congress party at the national-level today. Rising through the ranks as a student and labour leader, he has been everything from MLA and state minister to Union minister and Congress president though the post of Karnataka CM has somehow eluded him. The closest he came to the post was in 2013 when he was defeated in a Congress legislature party contest by Siddaramaiah who went on to become chief minister and held the post for a full term.

The veteran Congressman, who once represented Kalaburagi in the Lok Sabha, has moved on since then with most of his attention focused on national politics. Considered a full-blooded loyalist of the Gandhi family, he trounced the irrepressible Shashi Tharoor in the contest for Congress president. Kharge has been leading the battle against the government on the Adani issue from the front, uniting opposition parties on issues that strike a chord among them all.

Despite his age (Kharge is now 80), the elderly politician has spared no effort to lambast the Modi-led NDA government on every front. And now that Rahul Gandhi has been disqualified, his responsibility of taking on the government in Parliament has grown manifold. There’s nothing wrong in the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) president expressing his desire to see Kharge in the one post he has missed in his long political journey; but expecting the veteran to make a climb-down from the highest post in the Congress party would be asking too much of him.

With Assembly polls lined up in several states across the country after the Karnataka elections on May 13, Kharge will have to oversee the poll preparations to make sure the Congress party draws the benefit from the many botches of the Modi government. This requires political acumen, long years of experience and the sagacity to take politicians of different hues together – to achieve a common goal – that of toppling the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre.

Kharge has proved he has all these qualities and so the obvious question that arises is why should he be dragged back to state politics? The best way for the Congress party to move forward during the polls is to forget differences over leadership and candidate selection and ensure that the party wins the maximum number of seats possible so that it does not need support from outside to form the government.

And the most appropriate way to choose the CM elect is to leave it to the new Congress Legislature Party where a decision can be arrived at through a consensus or through a contest like it happened in 2013. A confused stance on the leadership issue is sure to filter down to the Congress rank and file and spoil the prospects of presenting a united face vis-à-vis the BJP and the Janata Dal(S), which could prove detrimental to its attempt to return to power.