S M Krishna learnt the ropes of Lutyens’ politics early in career

New Delhi: “Krishna was very lucky in life. He learned the pulse of Delhi politics,” former CM Dharam Singh commented when S M Krishna was picked by the Congress high command as the External Affairs Minister in the Manmohan Singh Government in May 2009. Singh, elected to Lok Sabha from Bidar on a Congress ticket, was also in contention, but had to sit out.

This was not the first time Singh had to make way for Krishna, who replaced him as Karnataka Pradesh Congress president in February 1999. In the following Assembly elections, the Congress won and Krishna became the chief minister in October 1999.

Luck apart, Krishna indeed had close ties with the Gandhi family and other top Congress leaders including Ahmed Patel, the political advisor to the then party president Sonia Gandhi. Krishna was elected to the Lok Sabha for the first time in the 1960s and developed cordial relations with the who’s who in the Delhi Durbar.

The former CM’s lifestyle also landed him in a few controversies. His stay in a 5-star hotel in Delhi after taking over as EAM created a furore in parliament. His clarification that he was paying from his pocket for the hotel accommodation as he was not allocated an official bungalow did not satisfy the Opposition. Krishna later shifted to the Institute of Foreign Service on the JNU old campus.

When Congress under Krishna lost the 2004 Karnataka Assembly polls, he was keen to become the CM for a second term with the support of the JD(S). Since the Congress was short of numbers former PM H D Deve Gowda suggested Dharam Singh’s name to Sonia.

Gowda also impressed upon Congress’s top brass to keep Krishna away from Karnataka politics. Subsequently, Krishna was made the Maharashtra Governor.

But his heart was in Bengaluru, where he wanted to return at the earliest. Krishna even addressed a press conference in Bengaluru in 2007 and expressed his eagerness to come back to state politics, which became national headlines.

To counter this, Deve Gowda, in a press conference in Delhi remarked, “I know who is instrumental in the bad publicity for the Dharam Singh government.”

But since Krishna sustained the party when the Congress was in the Opposition at the Centre between 1998 to 2004, the party accommodated him wherever possible. After the Maharashtra gubernatorial assignment, Krishna was sent to the Rajya Sabha in 2008 and became EAM the next year.

Interestingly, when Krishna joined the BJP after quitting Congress in 2019, he had good words to say about Sonia.

Known as a gentleman politician in Delhi’s political circles, Krishna always maintained balance among all factions in the Congress.