Siddaramaiah's flight diverted, lands in Jaipur amid bad weather in Delhi

The special flight carrying outgoing Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, his son Yathindra and party national general secretary Randeep Singh Surjewala, along with other Congress leaders took a detour to Jaipur amid bad weather in Delhi on Thursday, the Chief Minister's Office said.

Following his resignation as the chief minister, Siddaramaiah left for the national capital, where he is likely to hold talks with the High Command regarding his successor and the Cabinet formation.

"The special flight carrying Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has landed in Jaipur instead of Delhi due to adverse weather conditions. Karnataka in-charge and Congress general secretary Randeep Singh Surjewala, Ministers K J George, Bairathi Suresh, legal advisor Ponnanna, Siddaramaiah’s MLC son Yatindra, Congress secretary Abhishek Dutt were in the flight," the CMO statement said.

According to Siddaramaiah's travel plan shared with the media, he will land in Delhi tonight, and his return journey has been kept "open".

Earlier, in the day, Siddaramaiah tendered his resignation to the Governor's Special Secretary at Lok Bhavan in Bengaluru.

Special Secretary Prabhu Shankar received the resignation in the absence of Governor Thaawarchand Gehlot.

On Thursday morning, Siddaramaiah hosted breakfast for his Cabinet colleagues at his residence. It was also then that he informed ministers of his decision to step down and stated that Deputy CM Shivakumar would be his successor, as per the directions of the Congress high command, several ministers who attended the meeting said.

Meanwhile, Siddaramaiah's deputy and likely successor D K Shivakumar has also left for Delhi to attend the meeting. He left on an Air India aircraft a few hours after Siddaramaiah took off.