Axed for defying Congress’s ‘vote chori’ line, Siddaramaiah’s vocal loyalist: Who is Rajanna?

Ever since the Congress came to power in Karnataka in 2023, the Madhugiri MLA has put the party leadership on the back foot with his remarks on several issues. He has also been a bellwether of the power struggle between the party factions led by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and Deputy CM D K Shivakumar.

On Saturday, Rajanna, 74, said the Congress-led state government had failed to act when draft voter rolls were prepared. That his remarks came a day after Gandhi held a massive ‘Vote Adhikar Rally’ in Bengaluru also did not go down well with several Congress leaders.

An influential figure in the state’s cooperative sector, Rajanna is a four-time legislator belonging to the Scheduled Tribe (ST) Valmiki community. He was elected to the Karnataka Legislative Council in 1998 as a Congress nominee.

He left the party in 2004 over the denial of a ticket for his debut Assembly election, which he then contested, successfully, as a Janata Dal (Secular) candidate from the now-defunct Bellavi constituency.

After Siddaramaiah left the JD(S) to join the Congress in 2006, Rajanna was among the leaders who followed in his footsteps, to remain a Siddaramaiah loyalist since. Though his first two elections on the Congress ticket – from Madhugiri in the 2008 Assembly polls and then a bypoll in the same seat in 2009 – proved a failure, he was eventually elected from the Madhugiri Assembly seat in 2013 and then again in 2023.

Rajanna has also served as the president of the Karnataka State Co-operative Apex Bank for two terms.

Four months after the Congress stormed to power by winning the state Assembly polls in May 2023, Rajanna caused heartburn in the Shivakumar faction after he called for the need of three more Deputy CMs besides Shivakumar. This was among the Siddaramaiah camp’s initial moves targeting the Deputy CM as it reportedly felt that too much power was concentrated with Shivakumar, who has also been the Bengaluru Development and Water Resources Minister besides heading the state Congress unit.

Rajanna reiterated this demand in early 2024, before going silent on the issue. Later, he was also vocal in his demand to replace Shivakumar as the state party chief by reminding the Congress high command of its ‘one person, one post’ policy.

Earlier this year, during the Karnataka Legislature’s Budget Session, Rajanna dropped a bombshell when he alleged there was an attempt to “honey trap” him by a “gang” that had targeted 48 leaders cutting across party lines. Though there was then a buzz in state political circles that the “gang” was “linked” to a Congress leader, the Karnataka police’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID), which investigated the case, did not find any evidence behind Rajanna’s allegation.

A month ago, Rajanna again put the Congress leadership in a spot after he publicly objected to All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary in-charge of Karnataka, Randeep Singh Surjewala, holding a meeting with state government officials. Rajanna had said that while it was within Surjewala’s powers to meet party legislators and leaders, a meeting with government officials was “unconstitutional”.