On January 7, Siddaramaiah completed 2,793 days as Chief Minister, thereby breaking Devaraj Urs’s record as the longest-serving Chief Minister of Karnataka. The media has been flooded with advertisements and statements by progressive voices praising his achievements.
There is some truth in the claim that, like Devaraj Urs, Siddaramaiah created rays of hope among oppressed communities. At a time when Hindutva forces openly pursue “Blame -and-kill” politics, reject social justice, and undermine the Constitution, Siddaramaiah’s clear and firm pro–social justice, pro-Constitution, and pro–communal harmony statements have indeed instilled hope among Dalits and the oppressed.
But the real question is: has the Congress government under Siddaramaiah fulfilled those hopes, or has it continued the betrayals of the BJP era?
Going deeper, shouldn’t we ask whether the roots of the betrayals and treachery openly practised by the BJP actually lie in the corporate-driven economic policies and the internal “soft Hindutva” that the Congress itself implemented after 1991? And isn’t Siddaramaiah himself the Chief Minister of that very Congress party?
When Hindutva Fascist forces —nurtured directly and indirectly by the Congress—have deeply and widely fascisised the state’s politics, society, and economy, can a Congress Chief Minister really deliver programs of social justice, communal harmony, and welfare economics, beyond mere slogans, assurances, and a few limited relief measures?
There is much exaggerated discussion about the achievements of the Siddaramaiah 2.0 government. Blind admirers within the Congress, beneficiaries turned grateful loyalists, are hailing Siddaramaiah as a second Devaraj Urs. A large section of progressives, out of compulsion and helplessness—believing this to be the only remaining option—has chosen to turn a Gandhari-like blind eye to the many major social injustices committed by the Siddaramaiah government over the past two years due to Congress’s soft Hindutva, Manuvadi outlook, and corporate bias.
In reality, ten social injustices committed by the Siddaramaiah government, explained below, have further strengthened the roots of Sangh fascism in Karnataka. They also make it glaringly obvious—even to the blind—that the Congress under Siddaramaiah cannot be an ally in the struggle against fascism.
1. Blessings from Sangh-affiliated seers and ministers performing Paadapooja
Immediately after coming to power, under the pretext of training new legislators, the Congress-appointed Speaker arranged blessings from seers with the Sangh ideology. Among them were Sangh spokespersons like personalities Sri Sri Ravi Shankar Swamiji and BJP MP and “Religious Entrepreneur” Veerendra Heggade.
Chief Minister Siddaramaiah did not object; instead, he shared the stage and participated. Soon after, Home Minister Parameshwara invited Pejavara seer, another open votary of Brahminical Hindutva, to his residence and performed foot-worship, and also assured that the Bajrang Dal—responsible for violent anarchy during the BJP regime—would not be banned.
The intent was clearly to signal that the Siddaramaiah government is Pro-Sangh and hence pro-Hindu. This reflects the true politics of the Congress, regardless of Siddaramaiah’s personal views.
2. Implementation of the Sangh agenda at Bababudangiri Dargah
This is one of the gravest injustices to Karnataka’s syncretic culture. For decades, Sangh forces sought to declare Bababudangiri Dargah as a Datta Peetha temple. After various legal battles, Siddaramaiah’s own government in 2018 declared that the Bababudan shrine is a dargah and that appointing a Hindu priest would violate the 1991 Places of Worship Act.
However, in February 2025, the Siddaramaiah government submitted an affidavit to the Supreme Court stating that the state government endorses appointing a Hindu priest in Darga —completely reversing its earlier stand and appeasing Sangh forces.
3. Diverting of SCSP and TSP funds to guarantees
The Congress government came to power in 2023 because of the BJP’s massive corruption, its anti-Dalit and anti-Muslim stance, and the five guarantees promised by the Congress party. Siddaramaiah had stated in the party manifesto—and reiterated after becoming Chief Minister—that the resources required for these guarantees would be mobilised through administrative reforms, economic growth, and curbing corruption.
At the same time, the Modi-led central government indeed harassed the state by denying rice supplies to its Anna Bhagya Program and discriminating against Karnataka in the state’s share of central taxes and grants. However, this would amount to only about 5% of the state budget, which was 4.09 Lakh Crores in 2024-25.
Instead of taxing elites and corporate expenditures, the development model followed has been one of granting subsidies from the budget itself—tax exemptions, free land, and other concessions to corporates. As a result, no additional resources were actually mobilised to fund the guarantees.
Consequently, from the moment it came to power, the Siddaramaiah government has begun diverting SCSP and TSP funds to finance the guarantees. This is the biggest social injustice committed by a government that came to power in the name of social justice.
The federal directive to earmark special funds for Dalits and Adivasis through the Scheduled Caste Special Component Plan (SC-SCP) and Tribal Sub Plan (TSP) has largely been ignored by state governments over the years, and the money has been brazenly diverted to other projects.
Ironically, the Siddarmaiah government has done the same diversion of funds from SC-SCP and TSP funds for its guarantee programs, considering it passed a special law in Karnataka to prevent government departments from such a diversion of funds.
Since no BJP government has enacted such Dalit-oriented legislation, the BJP indeed lacks moral authority to speak on this injustice. But the people of this state certainly have the right to question it.
In reality, about 24% of the total expenditure on guarantees is being met from SCSP and TSP funds. And the Siddaramaiah government is making the specious argument that Section 7(C) of the Act permits such use.
According to the SCSP and TSP Act:
Section 7(A) allows the funds to be used for the specific welfare of Dalit individuals.
Section 7(B) allows them to be used for creating community assets that benefit Dalit communities exclusively.
Section 7(C) allows the funds to cover the Dalit share of expenditure in general welfare programs.
Section 7(D) allows their use in general programs that indirectly benefit Dalits.
However, the same Siddaramaiah government had earlier acknowledged that SCSP and TSP are not general poverty-alleviation programs. Rather, they are specific, separate, and supplementary programs intended to reduce the caste-induced distance among the poor, and build the capacity of Dalit–Adivasi communities to benefit from general poverty-alleviation schemes and create assets that benefit their alleviation with exclusive emphasis. On this basis, it scrapped Section 7(D). But for the same reason, Section 7(C) should also have been scrapped. In fact, Sections 7(C) and 7(D) should never have existed when the law was framed.
But when a resource crunch arose for funding the guarantees, the Siddaramaiah government began invoking the very same Section 7(C) to divert SCSP and TSP resources toward the guarantees, thereby inflicting a grave social injustice on Dalit and Adivasi communities.
This is not an injustice that Siddaramaiah is committing personally against Dalits. It is a structural contradiction produced by the economic policies followed by his government—and by governments of all parties.
In a welfare state, resources should be mobilised by imposing higher taxes on the wealthy and on capital, to provide benefits to those who lack them. But today, including the Congress, all political parties compete to create a “favourable investment climate” for corporates, offering subsidies and tax concessions. This was evident even at the Global Investors Meet (GIM) held in Bengaluru under the leadership of Siddaramaiah and M.B. Patil.
If additional expenditure, such as guarantees, is to be met without taxing the wealthy, how can it be sustained? The only way is by cutting what is allocated to those who have nothing.
Whether it is Siddaramaiah, Rahul Gandhi, the Bahujan Party, the AAP, or even the communists (leave aside the BJP, which does not even speak the language of social justice), as long as they follow corporate-driven economic policies, their social justice policies will inevitably involve giving with one hand and taking away with the other.
Thus, this is the kind of “social justice” produced by the post-1991 economic policies. Claiming to deliver social justice without changing those policies is inherently deceptive. The policies of the Siddaramaiah government prove this.
4. Yielding to dominant castes: The Kantharaj Report and the marginalisation of social justice
A crucial component of social justice is reservation in education and employment in proportion to social backwardness. To achieve this, a survey of the social status of castes is essential. This was mandated in 1994 by a nine-judge Constitutional Bench of the Supreme Court.
In line with this, the Congress government led by Siddaramaiah, which came to power in 2013, conducted a social survey under the chairmanship of Kantharaj. The survey was completed with substantial preparation and scientific rigour, and the report was duly submitted. A government genuinely committed to social justice should have immediately accepted and implemented it.
However, neither during his first term nor in his second term did Siddaramaiah accept the Kantharaj Report. Instead, bowing to pressure from dominant castes belonging to the BJP and the Congress, the government pretended to “receive” the report but effectively rejected it by declaring it outdated—thus committing a major injustice against backward communities.
In its place, the government conducted a hurried, ill-prepared, incomplete, and substantively ineffective social survey. Moreover, since the High Court ruled that participation in this survey is not mandatory due to the lack of proper legal backing, any decisions taken on this basis are unlikely to meet judicial standards.
This is characteristic of the Congress party, historically. In 1969, when the Congress split under Indira Gandhi’s leadership, as in every state, even in Karnataka, Devaraj was compelled to rebuild the party by fostering leadership from previously unrepresented AHINDA sections. This led to policies such as “land to the tiller” and reservation.
At the national level, however, these policies were effectively implemented only in West Bengal and Kerala, where strong movements of the landless existed. In Karnataka, too, they were meaningfully implemented only in Dakshina Kannada and Shivamogga districts.
The first Backwards Classes Commission in the state, headed by L G Havanur, kept the dominant communities, such as Vokkaligas, out of the ambit of reservation and provided reservations to deprived communities. Yet, the dominant communities were able to obtain reservations and mocked the very principle of social justice inherent in the reservation.
After Urs, and especially after Indira Gandhi returned to power in 1980, the Congress increasingly came to power by compromising with dominant castes and exploitative forces.
Siddaramaiah is no exception to this trend. Without challenging or dismantling the dominance of powerful castes, how can social justice be achieved? At best, it only creates the illusion of social justice.
Thus, even under Siddaramaiah’s leadership, due to the Congress party’s politics of compromise, the AHINDA communities have suffered grave injustice in the matter of social census and social justice.
5. Gross injustice to nomadic communities in sub-reservation within Scheduled Castes
In its handling of sub-classification within the Scheduled Castes, the Siddaramaiah government has committed a serious injustice against the most marginalised SC communities—especially nomadic Dalits.
The background is crucial. In 2005, the Congress–JD(S) government appointed the Justice A.J. Sadashiva Commission to examine sub-reservation within SCs. But by the time the report was submitted in 2012, a five-judge bench of the Supreme Court had ruled that such sub-classification was unconstitutional and beyond the powers of state governments. Only two routes were then available: a constitutional amendment to Article 341, or a reference to a larger bench. Neither the UPA nor the BJP—despite the latter later having the numbers—chose to pursue either option.
Yet all major parties continued to promise SC communities that they would implement the Sadashiva report, fully aware that they lacked the authority to do so.
This deadlock ended only on August 1, 2024, when a seven-judge bench of the Supreme Court upheld the constitutional validity of sub-classification and affirmed the powers of state governments. Although Siddaramaiah announced that Karnataka would implement the ruling, the Congress leadership soon began delaying the process.
Only after renewed protests did the government appoint Justice Nagamohan Das to recommend an implementation formula. His evidence-based study proposed a rational distribution that prioritised the most backward nomadic Dalit communities. However, under pressure from numerically and politically dominant SC groups, the government abandoned this formula and replaced it with an arbitrary 6:6:5 classification that lumped nomadic Dalits with relatively advanced “touchable” SC communities.
The injustice was deepened by a provision that allowed reserved positions meant for nomadic Dalits to be filled by other SC groups if eligible candidates were unavailable—effectively nullifying the safeguard. Matters worsened when the government argued in court that nomadic Dalits were no more backward than “touchable” SC communities.
The BJP-appointed Governor’s refusal to grant assent has since allowed the BJP to opportunistically posture as a defender of nomadic Dalits—an opening created by the Congress’s own dominant-caste-driven handling of the issue.
This episode lays bare a larger truth: within parties structurally controlled by powerful castes, individual leaders’ professed commitments to social justice matter little. Whether Congress or the BJP, parties dominated by caste power cannot be reliable instruments of emancipation for the most marginalised.
6. Naxalite surrender policy: Dishonesty and betrayal
The Naxalite movement challenges the exploitation of landlords and capitalists—the ruling classes—and wages an armed struggle against the state that protects them. Therefore, ruling-class parties like the Congress and the BJP have always attempted to suppress the Naxalite movement through conciliation, division, inducement, and especially repression.
In fact, what the Congress government initiated as Operation Green Hunt has been continued by the Modi government as Operation Kagar. Due to intensified military operations under the BJP government, the movement is currently facing severe losses and crises. In the last year alone, the Modi government has killed more than 600 Naxalites and forced over a thousand to surrender.
The Congress has not opposed this brutal repression anywhere. On the contrary, in states like Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra, local Congress leaders—landlords and business elites—have fully cooperated with it. Thus, there is little difference between Congress and the BJP in terms of Naxalite repression or surrender policies.
In Karnataka, the Siddaramaiah government made some cosmetic changes to the state’s Naxalite surrender policy in 2013, following intervention by civil society. In substance, however, there is no major difference between the Congress and the BJP surrender policies.
The policy is simple: Naxalites must surrender unconditionally. Cases will not be withdrawn. Assistance will be provided only to obtain bail, and some help will be given for rehabilitation. If they do not surrender, they will be killed in encounters.
Once the Naxalite movement begins to weaken, both Congress and the BJP start betraying even the promises they themselves made. That is why many senior Naxalite leaders of Karnataka who surrendered under the 2013 state policy, secured bail through courts, and came out, are now running from court to court struggling to survive in between. In some cases, the police have even actively tried to cancel their bail. Others who surrendered, trusting Siddaramaiah’s assurances, have been languishing in jail since 2017.
In 2024, this non-committal attitude of the Siddaramaiah government was once again exposed. Although Naxalite leader Vikram Gowda could have been captured alive, he was brutally killed, and the Siddaramaiah government proudly justified the killing. Subsequently, due to the honest and sustained efforts of civil society leaders and civilian members of the surrender committee, six Naxalite associates who were with Vikram Gowda surrendered directly before the Chief Minister, believing the promises he made.
To project itself nationally and internationally as different from the BJP, the Siddaramaiah government staged this surrender program inside the Chief Minister’s office, in front of national and international media, and handed copies of the Constitution to the surrendered Naxalites—thereby conveying a ruling-class political message.
However, even after a year, none of the surrendered Naxalites’ demands—speedy judicial processes, compensation, rehabilitation, or guarantees of dignified lives for Adivasis in Adivasi regions—have progressed even an inch. Civil society members who have been working tirelessly and honestly for this cause have become so disillusioned that they are considering hunger strikes against the government’s betrayal of promises.
Ironically, in BJP-ruled states, cases are being withdrawn, and swift rehabilitation is being implemented.
The essence is this: whether it is the Congress under Siddaramaiah or the BJP under Modi, both are parties of the exploitative ruling classes. They will never nurture forces that struggle against them.
7. Injustice and vendetta against Devanahalli farmers
The Devanahalli episode is a living example of the Rhetoric and Reality of the governments in the age of Neoliberal Onslaught on the farmers. Farmers from 13 villages in Devanahalli had been continuously protesting since 2022 against the BJP government’s forcible acquisition of their 1,778 acres of land through KIADB, without their consent. These villages, located near the Bengaluru International Airport, were targeted to build a Corridor of aerospace and defence industries in the name of the state’s aggressive “development,” and the BJP government insisted that Devanahalli land was indispensable for this purpose.
This involved two anti-farmer, anti-democratic positions:
Acquisition of farmers’ land without their consent.
Sacrificing farmers for capitalist development.
The farmers had been fighting against both these positions. At that time, Siddaramaiah, as Leader of the Opposition, visited the protest site, endorsed the ideological basis of the farmers’ struggle, and declared that if he came to power, the land acquisition would be immediately withdrawn.
However, after coming to power in 2023, instead of withdrawing the acquisition, the Siddaramaiah government, in 2025, issued a final notice through KIADB to acquire the same 1,778 acres.
By then, it was also evident that even during its tenure in 2013, the Congress government led by Siddaramaiah had itself introduced corporate-friendly amendments—similar to those of the BJP governments—diluting the farmer-friendly land acquisition policy (LARR) that land should not be acquired without farmers’ consent.
Meanwhile, progressive organisations, farmer and worker unions across the state joined the Devanahalli farmers, intensifying the movement. National and international attention turned the struggle into a major public issue. Under these pressures, the Siddaramaiah government appeared to yield and announced that it would drop the land acquisition, earning widespread praise from progressive and farmer organisations.
But simultaneously, it continued backdoor tactics to intimidate farmers and pursued conspiracies to permanently weaken them by declaring the land a “Permanent Agricultural Zone.” Unheard, Unknown and illegal.
De-notification was not issued until November. Finally, in the December order, the government did not issue the simple de-notification demanded by farmers. Instead, it unilaterally declared the land a permanent agricultural zone—a concept not even recognised in law—and announced that only this patch of land is excluded, and land acquisition for aerospace and defence industries around this area would continue.
Without farmers’ consent, the government declared plans for export-oriented agriculture, contract farming, private warehouses, digital marketing, and incentives for foreign agribusiness investment—effectively turning farmers into tenants of Agri Corporates.
In essence, the Siddaramaiah government is implementing the same anti-small-farmer policies that the Modi government had introduced earlier. This is nothing but vendetta.
Just like the BJP, the Siddaramaiah government is:
Acquiring land for its chosen development model without farmers’ consent, and
Sacrificing farmers for capitalist development.
This is because both Congress and the BJP follow the same anti-democratic, anti-farmer, corporate-capitalist development model. Any Chief Minister unwilling to change this model will inevitably cloak farmer betrayal in the language of farmer concern—and nothing more.
8. Congress government – BJP bulldozers?
The bulldozer has become a symbol of the repressive, anti-poor development model being followed in this country. From the perspective of slum dwellers whose huts in places like Kogilu and Thanisandra were recently razed, there appears to be little difference between the BJP and the Congress.
In cities like Bengaluru, corporates and inhuman urban labour require cheap labour. When the lives of workers are rendered “illegal,” their labour becomes cheaper. This is precisely why slum dwellers in Bangalore, though citizens of this country, are forced to live like animals in over 1,200 unauthorised slums in Bengaluru and are denied the right to live with dignity.
BJP governments treat them as if they are not citizens at all, deploy bulldozers against them, and then divide the displaced as Hindu and Muslim to pursue communal politics.
But even the Siddaramaiah government, which claims commitment to social justice, is demolishing poor people’s huts overnight and throwing them onto the streets. Street vendors are evicted to make way for luxury malls. While slums are denied drinking water, the government spends ₹24,000 crore to build tunnel roads for the elites of Bangalore. By creating the Greater Bengaluru Authority, it is building a city for the privileged. For this purpose, thousands of acres of farmers’ land in Anekal and Bidadi are being forcibly acquired.
In the “Dream Bengaluru”, illegal encroachments by builders over more than 25,000 acres are regularised, while the lives of the poor who put up small tin sheds are declared illegal. Thus, what difference is there between Modi’s corporate-driven “Developed India” and Siddaramaiah’s builder-driven “Greater Bengaluru”? What difference between Social Justice and Corporate Communalism?
9. KPS schools: Denial of education to AHINDA children
As part of its anti-people, Hindu majoritarian, corporate-friendly National Education Policy (NEP), the BJP government implemented a massive social injustice policy of closing Lakhs of government schools in the bargain of a few thousand quality Schools.
Now, the so-called social justice–oriented Siddaramaiah government is pursuing the same objective through the Asian Development Bank (ADB)–funded Karnataka Public Schools (KPS) and Magnet Schools project.
If the government were strengthening existing government schools and building high-quality KPS schools—from primary to higher secondary—capable of competing with private schools, in addition to the existing schools and not as a ploy to close them down, this would have been welcome. But that is not what the Siddaramaiah government is doing.
Instead, it plans to shut down around 32,000 government schools spread across distant villages and merge them into about 6,000 KPS schools located at faraway panchayat centres. As a result, all government schools within a six-kilometre radius of a KPS will be closed, and students will be forced to travel up to six kilometres daily.
How are children expected to commute? What about transport facilities? The government has given no firm assurance of transportation, because its objective is cost-cutting, not increased expenditure. Once the KPS scheme is fully implemented, transport alone could cost an estimated ₹200 crore annually. Yet the government has already clarified in another circular that after the construction of KPS Schools, it will not provide funds for strengthening KPS Schools. Schools are instructed to raise funds from corporations, local donors, and other sources.
In that case, who will bear the recurring transport costs? Without free and reliable government transport, children simply cannot attend school. Dropout rates will inevitably rise. In the name of “quality education,” children will be left with no school at all, resulting in complete denial of education.
Most importantly, the educational problems of rural and oppressed-class children are not limited to transportation. The KPS concept itself contradicts the science of child development and learning—especially for oppressed communities. A primary school is the first step by which a child moves beyond the family into society. The closer the school is to the child’s home and its immediate environment, the higher the attendance and learning outcomes.
After 2000, when the policy of one school per village was implemented, school attendance among Adivasi, Dalit, marginalised communities, and girls increased significantly. The BJP government sought to violate the Right to Education Act (enacted by the UPA in 2009) by proposing the KPS-like model under NEP-2020. Now the Congress government is continuing the same approach.
The real objective behind all this is to reduce government expenditure on education. Under the FRBM Act, governments seek to cut “committed expenditure” on salaries and pensions. The largest government workforces are the police and schoolteachers. Police numbers cannot be reduced, so teachers are reduced instead—at the cost of the country’s future.
By shutting down 32,000 government schools, the Siddaramaiah government is depriving poor AHINDA children in rural areas of even the minimal educational opportunity they had, however poor its quality.
10. Continuation of BJP policies on cow slaughter, conversion, APMC
Even after being in power for two and a half years, the Congress government continues to enforce key BJP policies—such as amendments to land laws, private APMC markets, the cow slaughter ban, and anti-conversion laws—without repeal.
However socially concerned Siddaramaiah may be as an individual—or not—he is the Chief Minister of the Congress party. With his active consent or Gandhari-like silence, these injustices have been implemented.
This does not mean the BJP is better.
The BJP is dangerous. The Congress is disappointing.
The BJP is the problem. The Congress is the continuation of the problem.
Even with Siddaramaiah as Chief Minister, the Congress softly continues the BJP’s corporate and Brahminical policies, while the BJP enforces them aggressively.
Therefore, in essence:
Congress and the BJP are not identical.
But the difference between them is not very large.
Merely changing parties will not transform lives.
The illusion that fascism can be defeated through the Congress will not succeed.
At the very least, the past two and a half years of the Siddaramaiah government should shatter that illusion.
Without building another freedom struggle to realise the constitutional ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity, the country has no future.
There is no escape from fascism.
Shivasundar is an activist and freelance journalist.
Views expressed are the author’s own.