According to sources in the Congress, eight legislators are likely to be sworn in as ministers along with them.
Fourteen ministers are from the Congress, nine from its ruling coalition partner Janata Dal-Secular and one each from the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Karnataka Pragnyavantha Janatha Party.
A new cabinet in the state will be in place in the next 48-72 hours.
'Entire process of meeting individual legislators of Congress party has been completed with great bohemia.'
Both the eight-time MLA Shivakumar and former Chief Minister Siddaramaiah have made no secret of their ambition to become CM and had been involved in a game of political one upmanship in the past.
Announcing its first list of 189 candidates on Tuesday, the BJP pitted senior Minister R Ashoka against Siddaramaiah in the Varuna Assembly segment, while V Somanna would take on Shivakumar in Kanakapura.
President of the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee DK Shivakumar termed the step "unconstitutional"
Sources within the Congress, including those who have been members of the teams that drafted its 2019 and 2024 Lok Sabha poll manifestos, said the Karnataka government decision lacked any empirical basis.
Five Congress legislators on Wednesday threatened to resign if senior party leader and minister K H Muniyappa's son-in-law Chikka Peddanna was given a ticket to contest from Kolar in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, bringing into open the divisions in the outfit.
Legislators are said to be miffed and have complained that they had not been able to get work done in their constituencies, and also transfers (of Government servants) as requested, and have expressed unhappiness regarding Ministers, alleging non-cooperation.
On whether injustice has been done to Dalits by not giving a DCM post to the community, he said the people, especially the Dalit community, have huge expectations.
He also asserted that everything has gone smoothly for the party in the assembly polls and the government will be formed soon.
In the manifesto for the polls released in Bengaluru by Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge in the presence of the state unit chief D K Shivakumar and Congress Legislature Party leader Siddaramaiah and others, the party reiterated its five guarantees: Gruha Jyothi, Gruha Lakshmi, Anna Bhagya, Yuva Nidhi and Shakti.
The Congress Legislature Party, which met at a private hotel in Bengaluru on Sunday evening, passed a unanimous resolution authorising the party chief to pick its leader.
The first Karnataka legislative assembly session, after the formation of the new government will be held on starting Monday next week in Bengaluru.
It should announce its candidates 45 days before the elections; trust rooted leaders; start its campaign focused on five guarantees six months before elections.
Siddaramaiah's anti-urban bias, which he does not bother to hide, may become the Congress government's biggest weakness unless it is corrected.
Will the new Congress government implement the five 'guarantees' that helped it in part to wrest power from the Bharatiya Janata Party in toto or will they now add a "conditions apply" clause?
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, however, was conspicuous by her absence at the event, which was attended by tens of thousands of people as the Congress sought to promote opposition unity.
While addressing a Veerashaiva-Lingayat meeting in Shivamogga, Eshwarappa said, "We do not want even a single Muslim vote here. Nationalist Muslims will, however, vote for the BJP."
Outgoing Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai on Wednesday said the 'inability' of the Congress to decide on the new chief minister early, despite having a complete majority, reflects on the internal situation of the party.
The latest tension between the two states cropped up after the Shinde government recently announced that it would allocate an additional Rs 54 crore for its 'Mahatma Jyotiba Phule Jan Arogya Yojana', so that the benefits could be extended to the border villages in Karnataka that Maharashtra has been laying claim to.
Announcing the fifth poll 'guarantee' of the Congress ahead of the May 10 assembly polls in Karnataka, party leader Rahul Gandhi on Thursday promised free travel for women in public transport buses, if it's voted to power in the state.
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Tuesday released its first list of 189 candidates for the May 10 Karnataka assembly polls, fielding Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai from his traditional Shiggaon constituency.
The Karnataka government issued orders to implement the 'Gruha Jyoti' and 'Shakti' schemes.
The ruling Communist Party of India-Marxist on Monday took a veiled dig at the Congress by asking it to safeguard its newly elected Karnataka MLAs from being poached by the Bharatiya Janata Party as was allegedly done by the saffron party in Goa amidst the Bharat Jodo Yatra.
Extending its winning run in the south, the Congress on Sunday won 64 assembly seats to form government in the Bharat Rashtra Samiti-dominated Telangana, with the southern solace coming in the midst of a saffron sweep of the Hindi heartland where the Bharatiya Janata Party wrested two states from the grand old party and retained one.
Chief Minister Siddaramaiah after a Cabinet meeting here on Wednesday said that the government has decided to go for open market tender to procure rice, whose process will start from Thursday.
Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Monday launched payment of cash in lieu of the additional 5 kg of rice to beneficiaries under the government's 'Anna Bhagya' scheme.
The single judge of the Karnataka high court hearing the case related to the 'hijab' ban in school-college campuses referred the matter to Chief Justice Ritu Raj Awasthi on Wednesday with a view that the CJ may decide on constituting a larger bench to look into the case.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Tuesday conducted searches against Tamil Nadu Electricity Minister V Senthil Balaji and some others as part of a money laundering investigation and held multi-city searches, official sources said.
With the Bihar government releasing the findings of its caste survey, pressure seems to be mounting on the Karnataka government, especially within the ruling Congress, to make the state's Socio-economic and Educational Census, popularly known as the 'caste census', public.
Today, with the Lok Sabha polls only months away, any inter-state dispute over the Cauvery water dispute has the potential to take more political turns than otherwise, predicts N Sathiya Moorthy.
'The BJP knows only one language, intimidation!'
'Karnataka's finances are much healthier than the Union government's, which is indebted to nearly twice the extent of the state.'
Although the BRS is projecting supreme confidence, who will be able to tap anti-incumbency -- the BJP or Sharmila plus the Congress -- remains to be seen.
Siddaramaiah, who hails from the shepherd Kuruba caste, holds the record for presenting the highest number of Budgets in Karnataka -- 13 so far. He has often spoken about how he was mocked in 1994 before he presented his first Budget. 'Some people asked, "Can he count sheep?",' Siddaramaiah told a regional news channel.
The 79-year old leader, who served as the chief minister of Kerala twice, breathed his last in a private hospital in Bengaluru at 4.25 am. His end came while undergoing treatment for cancer, party sources said.
The BJP leadership knows it can't boast of governance in the state as the Bommai government has little to show. So, the game plan is to project Modi, who will reiterate how important it is for a state to have the same party ruling in power at the Centre, observes Ramesh Menon.
The implementation of the five 'guarantees' announced by the Congress may cost the state exchequer an estimated Rs 50,000 crore annually.
