In Karnataka, Chief Ministers rarely complete a full term. Navigating coalition politics, defections, and factional rivalries is a challenge few manage to survive. Siddaramaiah has done more than survive: he has returned to office across two non-consecutive terms and, on January 7, 2026, completed seven years and 240 days in office, becoming the state’s longest-serving Chief Minister and surpassing a record held for over four decades by another Congress leader Devaraj Urs.
While Urs reshaped Karnataka through bold structural reforms in the 1970s, Siddaramaiah operates in a more fragmented, urbanised, and politically polarised environment, where endurance depends as much on managing electoral alliances and delivering visible benefits to the public as on setting policy agendas. His record raises a bigger question: what does it take to wield lasting influence in a state where power shifts like the proverbial sands?
Beyond the personal and political milestone, this also signals a rare spell of continuity in a state often marked by instability. After Devaraj Urs, Siddaramaiah is the only Chief Minister to have completed a full term in office in more than 35 years.
The comparison with Urs is inevitable and uncomfortable. Both hail from Mysuru district, both rose from OBC communities, and both shaped politics through the AHINDA framework. Yet for all their ideological similarities, their political footprints diverge in striking ways. Behind the symbolism lies a more complicated story of contrasting political choices, different social impacts, and legacies that may not age the same way.
Even though many people see Siddaramaiah as Devaraj Urs’s ideological successor, he has rarely spoken about Urs himself. He has spoken more often about Prof MD Nanjundaswamy, a farmers’ leader and activist, often credited with bringing Siddaramaiah into politics. There is also no official record of Siddaramaiah ever having met Urs, suggesting that the idea of ideological succession is something constructed later, rather than based on a direct personal or political connection.
Urs and Siddaramaiah: shifting state power
One of the strongest similarities between Urs and Siddaramaiah is how both used the power of the state deliberately to shift resources toward people long excluded from economic and political power. Urs did this most dramatically through land reforms. In the early 1970s, large landowners controlled vast tracts of farmland while tenants and agricultural labourers worked without ownership or security.
Under Urs, the Karnataka Land Reforms Act was tightened, ceilings were placed on landholdings, and surplus land was taken over by the government and redistributed to landless families. Many Dalit and backward caste households received legal ownership of land for the first time, permanently altering village power structures, weakening dominant caste landlords, and giving poorer families bargaining power and a sense of dignity tied to ownership.
Siddaramaiah’s record arrives in a very different political world. The Karnataka that Urs governed in the 1970s was still largely rural, its economy anchored in agriculture, its politics shaped by social movements, and its party system dominated by the Congress. The Karnataka that Siddaramaiah governs today is urbanising, deeply integrated into market capitalism, politically fragmented, and ideologically polarised, particularly along communal lines. The significance of Siddaramaiah’s record lies not in whether he resembles Urs but in how different his endurance has had to be and what it tells us about how Karnataka itself has changed.
Endurance in a fragile system
Longevity in Karnataka politics has never been easy. Since the late 1980s, the state has seen frequent changes of government, coalition breakdowns, defections, and recurring episodes of President’s Rule. Chief Ministers have often lasted months rather than years, and political survival has been fragile and constantly negotiated.
Against this background, Siddaramaiah’s endurance stands out. He completed a full five-year term from 2013 to 2018, a rarity in itself, and then returned to office in 2023 in an era where Narendra Modi’s BJP has been sweeping elections nationwide. Siddaramaiah managed to hold together a diverse coalition of leaders from multiple ideologies within his own party.
This endurance cannot be explained simply by popularity or electoral fortune. It reflects a sustained capacity to manage internal party factions, accommodate competing social interests, neutralise rivals, and adapt to changing political conditions. In a political system innately hostile to stability, Siddaramaiah has shown an ability to survive.
Urs’s endurance, in contrast, was often tied to confrontation with dominant castes, entrenched elites, and sometimes his own party. His tenure was marked by conflict and rupture. Urs governed Karnataka in a climate of near-permanent political unease, much of it engineered from within the Congress. His rise coincided with a decisive shift in the Congress’s social base, as he pushed through land reforms and reoriented state power toward backward classes and marginalised communities.
The resulting instability did not take the form of open rebellion alone but of constant factional pressure and quiet sabotage. Leaders like Veerendra Patil and KH Patil, along with rival groups within the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee, periodically challenged Urs’s leadership and lobbied the central high command against him. MLAs aligned with older Congress factions threatened defections and withdrew support at critical moments, forcing Urs to govern defensively even at the height of his popularity.
As national politics shifted after the Emergency and the Congress split weakened his standing in Delhi, this internal resistance intensified, culminating in Urs’s resignation in 1980. His tenure stands as a reminder that in Indian politics, the most destabilising opposition to transformative reform often comes not from across the aisle, but from within the ruling party itself.
Caste and leadership
One of the deepest historical continuities between Urs and Siddaramaiah lies in the caste politics of their rise.
For much of Karnataka’s post-Independence history, political leadership was concentrated within two dominant caste groups: Lingayats and Vokkaligas. These communities controlled not only economic resources, land, business, institutions, and religious mutts, but also political networks, party hierarchies, and social influence. Chief Ministers, ministers, party bosses, and major legislators were overwhelmingly drawn from these groups.
Born into the Kuruba community, Siddaramaiah was also from Mysuru region, he did not enter politics through elite networks or inherited influence. He entered through grassroots mobilisation, farmers’ movements, and later through complex negotiations within the JD(S) and the Congress.
Although both leaders hail from OBC communities, there is also a marked difference in the social locations of the two leaders. Devaraj Urs came from the Arasu community, believed to be from the Kshatriya group with connections to the Wodeyar family of Mysuru. His family were landowners and had social and financial clout.
In contrast, Siddaramaiah comes from the Kuruba community, a group of shepherds, and his family was not financially stable when he was growing up. Siddaramaiah has often spoken about being the first in his village to attend college, and having come from such a background, he hardly had high political ambitions for himself.
Born into the Kuruba community, also from Mysuru region, Siddaramaiah did not enter politics through elite networks or inherited influence. He entered through grassroots mobilisation, farmers’ movements, and later through complex negotiations within the JD(S) and the Congress.
But in their policies, both Urs and Siddaramaiah expanded the horizon of political possibility for communities that had long been marginalised from formal power.
Reform and welfare
Devaraj Urs governed during a period when social movements were active, the Congress was dominant, and the state had significant capacity to intervene directly in economic and social life. These conditions allowed for reforms that were structural.
Education and reservation policy reinforced this transformation. Urs strengthened quotas for backward classes and ensured they were actually implemented. He expanded hostels, scholarships, and institutions to enable first-generation learners to enter and remain in education. The result was the creation of a new social stratum with access to literacy, employment, and political participation.
Equally important was leadership cultivation. Urs consciously identified and promoted leaders from backward and marginalised communities, building a new political elite. This was not incidental; it was strategic. He institutionalised backward class politics through commissions, reservations, and leadership cultivation.
The Havanur Commission provided the empirical basis for expanding quotas. It was asked to answer the question central to post-Independence Karnataka: who had been left out of the state’s growth story? Its report, submitted in 1975, was blunt. Using indicators such as occupation, land ownership, access to education, and presence in government jobs, it concluded that close to 85% of Karnataka’s population fell into one backward category or another. Backwardness, it argued, was not just about caste rank but about who controlled resources and who did not.
Urs acted on the report with alacrity. Reservations in education and public employment were expanded, and the Congress’s old social base, dominated by a few powerful agrarian castes, was decisively shaken.
For the first time, large sections of artisans, smaller peasant groups, minorities, and service castes saw the state opening up to them in a systematic way. Senior Congress leaders bristled, legal challenges followed, and factional resistance hardened within the party. But the long-term effect was irreversible: the Havanur Commission changed who entered the bureaucracy, who rose within politics, and who could credibly claim a stake in governance. Karnataka, years before Mandal, became a proving ground for backward class assertion.
Siddaramaiah and structural change
Siddaramaiah operates in a very different Karnataka. Once agrarian, the economy is now urban, service-driven, and capital-intensive. Media cycles are rapid, and communal identity has become a strong axis of mobilisation.
Across both his terms, Siddaramaiah’s most visible interventions have been welfare schemes rather than systemic reforms. During his first term as Chief Minister from 2013 to 2018, his government rolled out Anna Bhagya, which provided heavily subsidised rice through the public distribution system, and Ksheera Bhagya, which supplied milk to schoolchildren to address malnutrition. Indira Canteens were introduced in major cities to offer low-cost cooked meals to informal workers, migrants, and the urban poor.
After returning to power in 2023, Siddaramaiah broadened this approach through a set of “guarantee” schemes. Gruha Lakshmi provides a monthly cash transfer to the woman head of a household; Shakti offers free bus travel for women across the state; and other programmes subsidise electricity, food grains, and basic utilities. Collectively, these schemes focus on stabilising household consumption and reducing everyday vulnerability, particularly for women, informal workers, and low-income families, rather than on redistributing assets, land, or political power.
Ahinda: from ideology to electoral strategy
AHINDA, an acronym for minorities, backward classes, and Dalits, originated under Urs not as an electoral slogan but as a conceptual framework for political realignment. It functioned as a bridge between social movements and state power, pointing toward a reorganisation of social power. Its coherence was sustained by unions, student organisations, and local leaders who saw themselves as part of a larger project of social transformation.
Under Siddaramaiah, AHINDA works differently. It is not rooted in autonomous social organisations; it is embedded in electoral strategy. It is held together not by ideology but by incentives, representation, and delivery. Its internal diversity is far greater, and interests often conflict. Minorities seek protection from majoritarian politics, backward classes seek economic mobility and recognition, and Dalits seek dignity and structural justice. These are not always aligned.
Leadership cultivation reflects the difference. Urs systematically promoted leaders from backward classes and minorities, ensuring that reform would be institutionalised through people as well as policy. This created continuity beyond his own tenure. Siddaramaiah has not built a comparable leadership pipeline. Many backward class communities remain under-represented in positions of power. His survival depends on limiting the autonomy of others rather than empowering them.
Religion and the changing political landscape
One of the biggest differences between the worlds Urs and Siddaramaiah operated in is the role of religion in politics. Urs governed when the main political arguments were about caste, class, and the state’s role in redistributing power and resources. Religious identity was present but secondary.
Siddaramaiah’s Karnataka is very different. The BJP has worked steadily to shift politics toward religion, symbolism, and majoritarian sentiment. Debates that once centred on welfare, representation, and inequality are now routinely reframed through religious markers, whether temple politics, public processions, or controversies over the hijab, halal certification, and religious conversion.
In this climate, Siddaramaiah has stood out. While some Congress colleagues occasionally echo or accommodate right-wing themes, he has remained relatively consistent in opposing Hindutva politics. This has made him a frequent target for the right-wing ecosystem, from sustained attacks by BJP leaders to hostile television debates and social media campaigns. At the same time, electoral pressures mean that this ideological stance does not always translate into policy.
The clearest example is his handling of communal laws and amendments introduced by the BJP under Basavaraj Bommai. Before the 2023 elections, the Congress promised to roll back divisive legislation, including the anti-conversion law, changes to the cow slaughter law, and amendments to education and public order targeting minorities. Siddaramaiah repeatedly framed these measures as politically motivated and socially harmful.
After returning to office, however, his government moved cautiously. The anti-conversion law was not immediately repealed; it was referred to committees for review. Amendments to the cow slaughter law were largely untouched. The hijab ban in schools, another major flashpoint, was not formally revoked, even as the government signalled a more relaxed approach to enforcement. In each case, the language shifted from “rollback” to “reconsideration” and from “repeal” to “review.”
Capitalism, welfare, and the limits of redistribution
There is a similar limit on what Siddaramaiah can do in the economic sphere. Karnataka is deeply embedded in market capitalism, powered by real estate, IT, infrastructure finance, and global investment. Inequality today is shaped less by land ownership than by insecure jobs, informal work, high urban housing costs, expensive education, and unequal access to money and connections.
This changes the role of the state. Redistributing assets or changing ownership patterns is far harder without spooking investors, slowing growth, or running into legal trouble. What the state can do more easily is soften the impact of inequality through welfare schemes, subsidies, and public services.
Siddaramaiah’s main economic programmes follow this logic. His government’s schemes put money, food, or services directly into people’s hands, especially women, students, workers, and the urban poor. Political scientist Muzaffar Assadi called it “Siddu socialism,” a politics that does not challenge capitalism but works within it, using the state to soften its harshest effects rather than remake the system.
While Urs built movements that outlasted him, Siddaramaiah manages coalitions that depend heavily on him. He has achieved a numerical milestone, but the tougher question – the legacy he will achieve – remains to be seen.