The “2.5-year formula” at the heart of the Congress government’s leadership crisis in Karnataka has never officially been confirmed by the party’s “high command”, but it remains a regular feature in its feuds.
It’s something the party encountered at least twice recently, in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, both states where it lost power in the elections that followed. The formula essentially means a half-and-half deal between a veteran leader and a younger successor for the CM’s post. Claimants and their supporters have, openly and off the record, spoken of it.
Formula or not, similar feuds over generational shifts apparently hurt the party’s prospects in Punjab and Madhya Pradesh too over the past decade.
In the latest, it’s between Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah, 77, and his deputy DK Shivakumar, 63, with the latter’s supporters camping in Delhi just as the state government completed half its term — 2.5 years or 30 months — on November 20.
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge — who happens to be from Karnataka and was at one time seen as a potential CM — has said that any decision on the matter would be taken solely by the party’s “high command”, essentially meaning Sonia and Rahul Gandhi, besides himself. He said it need not be discussed in public anyway.
Siddaramaiah put the onus on the high command, too, to put a “full stop to the confusion” while Shivakumar has been more cryptic and mentioned a “secret deal”.
Who said what on Karnataka Congress tussle
To a question about legislators backing Shivakumar travelling to Delhi, Siddaramaiah told news agency PTI: “Let them go. MLAs have freedom. Let’s see what opinion they give.”
He also acknowledged that there is “confusion”, if not an outright dispute: “Ultimately, to put a full stop to this confusion, the high command has to take the decision. We will abide by what the high command says.”
Shivakumar or DKS, who also leads the Karnataka Congress unit, insisted he did not want to speak in public about it. “I have not asked to make me the CM. It is a secret deal between five and six of us,” he said, not elaborating on the “deal”.
“I believe in my conscience. We should work with our conscience. I don’t want to cause embarrassment to the party in any way and weaken it. If the party is there, we are there. If karyakartas (party workers) are there, we are there,” Shivakumar said in response to a question, speaking to reporters in his home constituency Kanakapura.
He mentioned arithmetic, though: “[Siddaramaiah] is a senior leader. He is an asset for the party. He has completed 7.5 years as CM (including the 2013-2018 term).”
Asked pointedly about there being a power-sharing agreement — a half-and-half-term formula — after the assembly poll win in 2023, Shivakumar said, “Why should I speak about it? You (media) have written things.”
Party chief Kharge, meanwhile, was in Bengaluru over the past weekend, and was accompanied by Shivakumar to the city airport in his car when leaving for Delhi. Earlier, Siddaramaiah held an hour-long meeting with Kharge at his residence in Bengaluru.
While Siddaramaiah is pushing for a reshuffle of his cabinet, Shivakumar wants the party to first decide on leadership change, party sources said, according to news agency PTI.
What formula, asks Siddaramaiah’s key aide
But replacing Siddaramaiah is “not easy”, his key aide Basavaraja Rayareddy has said, asserting that he will complete the five-year term as CM. “Is he corrupt or anti-people?” Rayareddy, who is Economic Adviser to the Chief Minister and a senior MLA, said.
He dismissed talk of stepping down at mid-term. “We are not aware of any decision by the party suggesting that Siddaramaiah has to step down after the government completes 2.5 years in office. Siddaramaiah took oath as CM on May 20, 2023, and two days before that Congress Legislature Party meeting was held, where there was a contest, in which Siddaramaiah got majority, and he was elected as the CM,” Rayareddy said.
He was referring to the rather long tussle between Siddaramaiah and Shivakumar just after the party managed a victory in Karnataka while facing the Narendra Modi juggernaut in general.
“I too voted for Siddaramaiah (to become CM after the 2023 win), and none of us were told then that he would remain CM for only 2.5 years. If we were not told, then it means he is the CM for five years. So the question of CM change doesn’t arise,” Rayareddy further said.
Smirking at the rumblings in the ruling party, Karnataka BJP chief B Y Vijayendra said the state does not want “acting or outgoing CM”, and urged the Congress to settle its leadership tussle before the winter session of the legislature begins in Belagavi in December.
What happened in Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh?
A similar crisis took shape in the then Congress government in Rajasthan in 2020 — fundamentally a power struggle between CM Ashok Gehlot, who was close to 70 years of age, and his then deputy Sachin Pilot, who was barely 45.
Here, too, this unwritten agreement or alleged 2.5-year formula, brokered by the party high command after the 2018 election, would have meant that Gehlot would hold the chair for the first half of the term, and Pilot would take over for the rest.
As the halfway mark approached, and Gehlot showed no signs of such a step, Pilot led a rebellion in July 2020. Along with 18 loyalist MLAs, he camped in Delhi and Haryana. But the numbers were not enough to split the party without facing the anti-defection law.
Gehlot, a veteran of intra-party tussles, responded aggressively, famously calling Pilot “nikamma” (worthless) and “gaddaar” (traitor). As Gehlot’s camp initiated legal action to disqualify the rebels, the party high command prioritised the stability of the government.
The month-long crisis concluded when Pilot met Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi; and he went back to waiting his turn . He was stripped of his posts as deputy CM and state Congress chief.
Gehlot was later offered the Gandhis’ backing for the party’s national chiefship, but he preferred to remain in Jaipur. Kharge thus became the Gandhis’ choice, defeating Shashi Tharoor to become president of the Congress.
A similar crisis in Chhattisgarh was driven by rivalry between the then CM Bhupesh Baghel and his minister TS Singh Deo. Here, the CM, in his 60s now, was younger by a decade than the challenger, Deo, but the “2.5-year formula” was meant to balance factions within the party after the 2018 election win.
After the supposed rotational deadline, TS Singh Deo’s response manifested more in terms of persistent pressure within the party, than an outright coup attempt. But Baghel had control over the vast majority of Congress MLAs. The Gandhis finally engineered a tactical truce in June of 2023, just months before the assembly election, when TS Singh Deo was made deputy CM.
In both states, though, the Congress eventually lost to the BJP in the assembly elections that followed at the end of 2023.
Generation shift a tricky issue for Congress
The party had won the state of Madhya Pradesh, too, in 2018, along with Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. But there the intra-party rivalry of veteran Kamal Nath and a younger Jyotiraditya Scindia led to the government’s fall altogether in 2020. Scindia left the Congress and is now a minister in PM Modi’s government. The BJP got back the power, also winning the 2023 election.
In Punjab, too, the Congress chose to replace its veteran leader Capt Amarinder Singh as CM with a younger Charanjit Singh Channi just months before the 2022 election, after a rebellion co-led by Navjot Singh Sidhu. But the party lost massively to the AAP in that election.
