BENGALURU, Karnataka: After the Congress party emerged as the clear winner in the Karnataka Assembly elections 2023, Siddaramaiah today was sworn in as the Chief Minister of Karnataka for the second term. D K Shivakumar took formally charge as the Deputy Chief Minister.
The oath-taking ceremony took place in Sree Kanteerava Stadium, Bengaluru, administered by Governor, Thaawarchand Gehlot. Eight newly elected Karnataka MLAs also took their oaths as Cabinet Ministers.
Several high-profile ministers attended the event including Congress party’s National General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi and former President of the party Rahul Gandhi.
While talking to the press, Rahul Gandhi expressed his happiness and said, “After Congress’s victory, many things were written as to how Congress won this election, different analyses were done, but I want to say that Congress won because we stood with the poor, Dalits, and Adivasis, backwards. We had the truth, poor people. BJP had money, police, and everything, but the people of Karnataka defeated all their powers.”
Top opposition leaders attended the sworn-in ceremony, including Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, MK Stalin; Chief Minister of Bihar Nitish Kumar and Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav; Mehbuba Mufti, President of People’s Democratic Party; Sharad Pawar from Nationalist Congress Party (NCP); Farooq Abdullah, former CM of Jammu and Kashmir; Chief Minister of Jharkhand Hemant Soren, Sitaram Yechury, General Secretary of Communist Party of India (Marxist) and actor-turned-politician Kamal Haasan among others.
The Congress party won 135 seats in the 224-house assembly while the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Janata Dal managed to secure 66 and 19 seats respectively.