Talk of 'Kamraj Model' for Karnataka Congress

New Delhi: With talk of an imminent political earthquake in November in Karnataka, there is a debate brewing in the Congress on adopting the ‘Kamraj Model’ for the faction-ridden party.

Under this model, all the ministers, except Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and Deputy CM D K Shivakumar, could be asked to resign and the state council would be cast afresh with new faces.

The debate comes amid speculation about a “November Revolution”, which refers to a change of leadership when the Siddaramaiah-headed Congress government reaches the halfway mark. 

According to a senior leader in the high command, around 10 leaders in the Cabinet have been serving as ministers for 15 to 18 years since 1990 whenever the Congress government came to power in the state. Shivakumar, for example, became a minister in 1990 in the then government headed by chief minister S Bangarappa.

“Unless the party brings in new faces by replacing senior ministers, we can’t groom young leadership,” a leader said. “There are a few senior MLAs who have not been able to become ministers even once, while several have been serving as ministers for decades,” he said.

At present, the Cabinet comprises 32 members against the sanctioned strength of 34, including the CM.

While Siddaramaiah may also be keen to remove around 10 ‘non-performing’ ministers and induct fresh faces, the deliberation is going in the party top brass whether to ask the CM to go for the BJP’s Gujarat model, under which the saffron party recently made the entire 25-member Cabinet resign and inducted 19 new faces while retaining 6 old ministers.

Shivakumar, who is also state Congress president, has been complaining to the party top brass that the current set of ministers in the government is “loaded” with Siddaramaiah loyalists who came from the Janata Dal. He also has been strongly arguing that many senior ministers should be sent for party work.

DK Shivakumar 

Akin to the plan mooted by former Tamil Nadu chief minister K Kamraj in 1963, which led to the overhaul of the Nehru Cabinet and Congress-run state governments, Shivakumar also has been suggesting to the party top brass that senior ministers service should be utilised to strengthen the organisation to face the 2028 Assembly polls and 2029 Lok Sabha polls, sources said.

Ministers Krishna Byre Gowda and Dinesh Gundu Rao, who met Congress General Secretary K C Venugopal, said that they were ready to serve the party by quitting their posts if the party asked.  

In the event of the party high command allowing Siddaramaiah to continue for a full five-year term, the Vokkaliga leader may aggressively push for adopting the ‘Kamaraj Model’.

If it is thrashed out as an acceptable “compromise”, sources say the CM camp may suggest the party top brass create two more Deputy CM posts to accommodate the ST and minority or Scheduled Caste leader instead of only one DCM.

The CM may also ask the top brass to appoint a new state president by replacing Shivakumar as per the ‘one person, one post’ rule.