The Congress faces an acid test after its emphatic win in Karnataka assembly polls, with both state chief DK Shivakumar and senior leader Siddaramaiah eyeing the chief minister spot. Mr Siddaramaiah has already reached Delhi. DK Shivakumar has indicated that he needs to be in Bengaluru through the day on account of his birthday, but would reach Delhi by night.
On Sunday, a team of observers appointed by Congress met all the newly-elected Karnataka MLAs to get their vote on who should get the top spot. The team is now in Delhi for discussions with the party's national leadership, which includes Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, Sonia Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, and Rahul Gandhi.
The decision will finally be taken by Mr Kharge, the party announced after the meeting of its Karnataka MLAs yesterday evening. Congress General Secretaries Sushil Kumar Shinde, Deepak Babaria, and Jitendra Singh Alwar were the observers at the meeting.
The supporters of both DK Shivakumar and Siddaramaiah shouted slogans outside the Bengaluru hotel where the meeting took place.
Earlier today, Mr Shivakumar said that he has done the job he was tasked with and now it was up to the "party high command" to take a call on who gets the chief minister berth.
"We have passed a one-line resolution. We will leave it to the party high command. I have done whatever job I have to do," DK Shivakumar said.
The new Karnataka Chief Minister and the cabinet will take oath on Thursday, sources have said.
Both eight-time MLA Mr Shivakumar and former chief minister Siddaramaiah have made no secret of their ambition to become Chief Minister and had been involved in a game of political one-upmanship in the past.
While the 60-year-old DK Shivakumar is considered to be a "troubleshooter" for the Congress, Siddaramaiah has a pan-Karnataka appeal.
The Congress had entered the campaign phase with the challenge of keeping at bay the factionalism. After winning 135 seats in the 224-member Karnataka assembly, the party put up a united front with Mr Kharge and the two CM hopefuls addressing the media and party workers together.
The scale of the Congress win is a record in terms of both seats and vote share in over 30 years. The closest the Congress came to this score was in 1999 when it won 132 seats and had a vote share of 40.84 per cent. In 1989, it won 178 seats with a vote share of 43.76 per cent.
The BJP won only 66 seats, down from 104 in the 2018 state election. It did not win a single seat reserved for Scheduled Tribes (ST) category. Karnataka has 51 reserved constituencies, out of which 36 are for Scheduled Castes (SC) candidates and 15 for ST candidates.
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