Siddaramaiah emerges top contender to be Karnataka's next Chief Minister

As the suspense continues over who would be the new chief minister of Karnataka, Congress leaders DK Shivakumar and Siddaramaiah, the two top contenders for the CM post, met the party's top leadership in New Delhi on Tuesday. Siddaramaiah, the former chief minister, is the frontrunner for the top post as he is also being backed by MLAs from DK Shivakumar's camp.

Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge held a closed-door meeting with Rahul Gandhi for almost an hour and a half with Congress General Secretary Randeep Surjewala (who is in charge of the party’s affairs in Karnataka), and AICC general secretary (organisation) K C Venugopal in attendance, on Monday. While Shivakumar met Kharge, earlier today, Siddaramaiah is on his way to meet the Congress chief. While Siddaramaiah has emerged as the frontrunner, with majority of the newly elected MLAs learnt to have named him as their choice, Shivakumar, while speaking to news agency ANI said that he would not resort to “backstabbing” or “blackmail” regardless of what the Congress’ top leadership decides on the matter