D K Shivakumar: Congress troubleshooter to Karnataka CM
Called the ‘Kanakapura Bande’, the assembly section of which he represented and the granite rock of Kanakapura, Shivakumar also earned the reputation of being the ‘troubleshooter’ of the Congress party. His first major political break came in 1985, when he contested on a Congress ticket from the Sathanur Assembly segment but was unsuccessful. Four years later, he won the election and entered the Parliament in 1989. Since then, he has won the Assembly elections eight times in a row.
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Over the years, the 64-year-old leader has consistently positioned himself as the primary Vokkaliga strongman of the Congress party. Vokkaligas are among the dominant agricultural communities of Karnataka. The Congress high command tested its political management skills in 2017 by assigning Shivakumar the responsibility of guarding 42 Gujarat Congress MLAs in Bengaluru ahead of the Rajya Sabha elections to prevent cross-voting. It met the expectations of the party leadership with Congress candidate Ahmed Patel winning the election in Gujarat.
Congress leaders said the incident came at a personal and political cost to Shivakumar as the Income Tax Department raided properties linked to him at that time. The Congress claimed that the action was politically motivated. Then, a series of raids and searches were carried out by the Enforcement Directorate. On September 3, 2019, Shivakumar was arrested and lodged in Delhi’s Tihar Jail for 50 days. While many believed that jail time would weaken him or push him towards the BJP, his commitment to the Congress appeared to have grown stronger.
His organizational skills, political stamina and commitment to the party impressed the Congress high command, which appointed him as the president of the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee in 2020. Shivakumar took office at a difficult phase for the Congress in Karnataka. The party had performed poorly in the 2018 Assembly elections and the decline further deepened in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, where the Congress managed to win just one of the 28 seats in the state amid the Narendra Modi wave.
The BJP won 26 seats, including the BJP-backed independent candidate Sumalatha Ambareesh from Mandya. The only Congress victory came from Bengaluru Rural, where Shivakumar’s brother DK Suresh won. A month after the Lok Sabha debacle, the Congress-JD(S) coalition government led by HD Kumaraswamy collapsed following the disqualification of 18 Congress and JD(S) MLAs, most of whom later joined the BJP and helped the saffron party come to power for the fourth time in the state.Also Read: With DK Shivakumar winning the Congress Legislative Party race, Karnataka will get a new CM on June 3
Later by-polls for 18 seats ended in disaster for the Congress-JD(S) alliance, with the BJP winning 15 constituencies.
Following the poor performance, KPCC president Dinesh Gundu Rao resigned while Siddaramaiah resigned from the leadership of the Congress Legislature Party. It is under these circumstances that the Congress leadership turned to its trusted lieutenant Shivakumar in 2020; this decision would later revive the party’s fortunes in the state. Under his leadership, the Congress returned to power with a huge majority in the 2023 Karnataka Assembly elections, winning 134 seats in the 224-member Assembly.
The party’s actual strength later rose to 140 with the support of independent legislators, according to Shivakumar. It faces another important test during the 2024 Lok Sabha elections; here he once again showed his political acumen by increasing the Congress’s tally in Karnataka from one seat in 2019 to nine seats in 2024. Following Congress’ decisive victory in the 2023 Assembly elections, Shivakumar was appointed Deputy Chief Minister, holding the Bengaluru Development and Water Resources portfolio.
He also continued as the president of the Karnataka Congress, despite some leaders demanding a change in the leadership of the state unit.
Soon after the Congress forms the government in 2023, reports emerged of a power-sharing arrangement in which Siddaramaiah would serve as the Chief Minister for the first half of the five-year term, after which Shivakumar would take over. The claim was neither confirmed nor denied by either leader.
However, after the Congress government completed its two-and-a-half-year term on November 20, 2025, speculations about leadership change and power tussle between Siddaramaiah and Shivakumar intensified. Finally, Shivakumar was elected leader of the Congress legislature party here on Saturday and is set to take over as the next chief minister of Karnataka on June 3.
Born on May 15, 1962, to Kempegowda and Gauramma in Dodda Alahalli village near Kanakapura town in Bengaluru South district, Shivakumar entered politics during his college days in the early 1980s. In 1993, Shivakumar married Usha. The couple has two daughters named Aishwarya and Aabharana and a son named Aakash.
