Bengaluru, May 30 -- In Karnataka's political theatre, the most consequential statements are often made not from the dais but across the breakfast table. Chief Minister Siddaramaiah's one-on-one with Congress Working Committee member BK Hariprasad Thursday, presented as a routine meeting on communal harmony, was anything but casual.
The subtext was razor-sharp: remove me, and you risk alienating the very demographic that brought you to power in 2023.
That demographic is AHINDA, a coalition of minorities, backward classes, and Dalits, and Siddaramaiah is its most recognisable and electorally potent face in Karnataka.
The Congress party's landslide victory in 2023 was built not on dominant caste mobilisation but on the consolidation of this...