Siddaramaiah took oath as Karnataka Chief Minister today with DK Shivakumar, who was sworn-in as the Deputy Chief Minister.

The oath was administered by Karnataka Governor Thawar Chand Gehlot at Sree Karanveera stadium in Bengaluru.

Congress after its landslide victory in Karnataka, wanted to make its oath-taking ceremony a mega event inviting all the top brass leaders from various opposition parties in the country sending a message of opposition unity.

The opposition leaders who attended the event displayed a unity of strength holding their hands at the stage.

The leaders who have attended the event include Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) supremo Sharad Pawar, DMK supremo and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah, JD(U) supremo and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, former J&K National Conference president Farooq Abdullah, PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti,

The list of opposition leaders also include Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren, Bihar’s deputy CM Tejaswi Yadav, D Raja and Siataram Yechury from the left and also actor turned politician Kamal Hassan.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee was also sent out the invitation but she skipped the event as she already had other programs lined up.

Former Maharashtra Chief Minitser Uddhav Thackeray also received an invitation but failed to mark his attendance.

The leaders who were missed in the invitation list of the Congress are Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal, BRS leader and his Telangana counterpart K Chandarasekhar Rao along with his Andhra Pradesh counterpart Jaganmohan Reddy.

Reports said, Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik also did not receive an invitation, it also claimed Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan and Bahujan Samajwadi Party chief Mayawati were also not sent out any invitation.

The event was attended by Congress national president Mallikarjun Kharge, former party chief Rahul Gandhi, senior leaders Priyanka Gandhi, KC Venugopal and others.

Congress chief ministers Ashok Gehlot, Bhupesh Baghel and Sukhwinder Singh Sukhu were also present at the swearing-in event.

Former Madhya Pradesh CM Kamal Nath was also in the list of guests.  

Siddaramaiah takes oath as Chief Minister of Karnataka for a second term at Sree Kanteerava Stadium in Bengaluru.

DK Shivakumar has also sworn-in as the Deputy Chief Minister.

The oath was administered by Karnataka Governor Thawarchand Gehlot.

The oath taking ceremony of the newly elected Congress government has been attended by party’s national president Mallikarjun Kharge, former president Rahul Gandhi, senior leader Priyanka Gandhi and other senior leaders.

In the morning, Congress released the list of 8 ministers who will be taking the oath as the cabinet ministers in the newly elected government. The list of ministers include senior Karnataka Congress leader G Parameshwara and also Priyank Kharge, son of Mallikarjun Kharge.

As Congress forms its government in the fourth state, all chief ministers where the party is in ruling have attended the oath taking ceremony in Bengaluru.

Rajasthan Chief Ministyer Ashok Gehlot, Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel and Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Sukhwinder Singh Sukhu have made their attendance.

Several opposition leaders who were sent an invitation by Kharge to attend the ceremony are also present including NCP supremo Sharad Pawar, Bihar CM Nitish Kumar, Farooq Abdullah and other senior opposition party leaders.

The oath taking ceremony is being held exactly a week after the Karnataka results were declared, in which Congress won 135 seats out of the total 224 seats in the state.

After the victory, tensions within Congress flared up for days with the decision of whom should it name the next chief minister. Both Siddaramaiah and Shivakumar were on a tough race to sit on the Chief Minister’s chair.

It became difficult for the Congress to decide as Siddaramaiah already held the experience of running the state’s administration as the CM for a full term, while, Shivakumar is an energetic face of the party in the state who gave his sweat putting out all his efforts to make the party win with such a huge mandate.

The Bhagwant Mann-led Aam Aadmi Party government in Punjab has completed 14 months in office. AAP came to power breaking the state’s five-decades’ tradition alternating between the Congress and the Akalis, becoming the first non-Congress, non-Akali party to form a government in Punjab.

In the 2022 Punjab Assembly elections, AAP won 92 seats of the total 117 seats in the state. The victory was AAP’s first-ever government formation outside Delhi.

The landslide sent out a message that Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s popularity was increasing across the country, which was a point of concern for the national parties.

A former stage artist with only 10 years in active politics, Bhagwant Mann’s elevation to rule the state came as a surprise to many.

After Mann was declared AAP’s chief ministerial candidate, a large group of experts said Kejriwal had made a huge mistake in handling the responsibilities to Mann, who had no background in running an administration.

Political experts used to say, Mann is being handed with a state that has 23 districts, 237 towns, and 12581 villages. But the Punjab CM has come away looking the victor against these doubts of experts. Punjab faces many challenges, the biggest being sharing the border with Pakistan, a channel that is used to smuggle drugs, illegal arms and exports, a big threat for the state and for the country.

As Mann completes 14 months as Chief Minister, he seems to have had a clear thought to change all these narratives that were in the air linked to his name.

Let’s take a look on how Mann and his government has thrived so far

Tough on corruption

CM Mann has made a space for himself among the people and is often tagged as a man who is tough when it comes to acting against corruption.

Clean governance and taking a clear stand against corruption is what his government is known for, especially after the sacking of then Health Minister Vijay Singla, when corruption charges were levelled against him. And it was not just one man shown the door for corruption, another Punjab Minister Fauja Singh Sarari was also forced to resign over graft.

Mann has won wide-spread popularity for his government’s zero-tolerance policy against corruption. From political leaders to senior government officials, no one is spared in his regime even at the assistant inspector general of the police level, people have been sent to jail.

Agriculture

The recent passed budget of the government increased an outlay for crop diversification in the state, which was seen a major step taken in favour of the agriculture sector.

CM Mann also promised to include Moong dal under the Minimum Support Price (MSP) scheme benefiting farmers growing the pulse.

Free Electricity

In just four months after coming to power, the government also fulfilled the manifesto promise of 300 units of free electricity.

Some of the other major decisions that have helped the Punjab governement get a pat on its back was introducing one MLA, one pension scheme, scrapping of load enhancement fee on tubewells, launching Aam Aadmi Clinics (a replica of the Mohalla clinics in Delhi) and such.

Mann re-introduced the old pension scheme scrapped in 2004, under which a retiree is entitled for 50-percent of his last drawn salary, a step that wooed the working government staff and the retired staff across Punjab.

The Mann government has also been decisive on clearing possession of illegally encroached government lands. Reports said the Punjab government has till now freed some 10,000 acres of encroached land.

On Friday, Mann announced another drive against illegal occupation on government encroached lands starting from June 1.

The Mann government is often charged by the opposition for leaving the administrative control of the state in Delhi (read Kejriwal) instead of keeping it in Punjab.

The Bhagwant Mann government’s good performance is crucial for the Aam Aadmi Party to expand its national footprint in the 2024 Lok Sabha Polls. It wants to do well in Punjab for Lok Sabha and the Haryana Assembly elections next year, which the AAP has been eyeing for long and expects a Punjab-like outcome as they are neighbouring states.