By Ananya Sharma 
Karnataka, June 7: Four days into the job, and D.K. Shivakumar is already playing chess while others are still setting up the board.
The new Karnataka Chief Minister made his first visit back to Kanakpura on Sunday his home constituency, the place that has sent him to the assembly every single election since 1985. On the surface it was a homecoming. Prayers at the family temple, a stop at his father’s memorial, the kind of visit any politician makes after a big win. But tucked inside a public address at Harohalli, Shivakumar said something that had very little to do with divine blessings and quite a lot to do with ground-level politics.
He spoke directly to Janata Dal (Secular) workers.
“I am not just a leader for my own party workers,” he told the crowd. “I would tell the Janata Dal workers that DK Shivakumar has opened the doors for you as well. Think about how to make use of this.”
Read that again. A sitting Chief Minister, four days into office, publicly telling a rival party’s ground workers that his door is open. That is not small talk. That is a signal.
The 2018 Debt He Wants Repaid
Shivakumar did not make this appeal from thin air. He went straight back to 2018, when Congress and JD(S) now bitter rivals had stitched together a post-poll alliance that briefly held power in Karnataka.
The centrepiece of his argument was the Ramanagara bypoll. The seat fell vacant during that alliance period, and both parties agreed to back Anitha Kumaraswamy wife of JD(S) strongman H.D. Kumaraswamy for the contest. Congress workers campaigned for her. Congress voters turned out for her. She won by more than one lakh votes, in what was already a JD(S)-friendly belt.
“We helped JD(S)’s Anitha Kumaraswamy; we had previously helped Kumaraswamy win, though I won’t dwell on those matters now,” Shivakumar said on Sunday.
That last part “I won’t dwell on those matters now” is the kind of line that sounds restrained but is doing serious political work. It acknowledges the favour without turning it into a grievance. It says: I remember, you should too, and I am being generous enough not to press the point.
At the time of the alliance, the combined tally had reached 115 seats Congress on 78, JD(S) on 37. It was the kind of arithmetic that gave Karnataka a government. It also gave Shivakumar something he has clearly not forgotten: the memory of what Congress delivered for JD(S) when it mattered.
Seven Years and a Very Different Map
That alliance feels like another era now. It has been over seven years since it fell apart, and in the time since, JD(S) has moved firmly into BJP’s camp backing the saffron party across assembly and Lok Sabha elections without much ambiguity. H.D. Kumaraswamy himself has made no real secret of his distance from the Congress leadership, and the warmth between the two parties at the leadership level is essentially non-existent.
But Shivakumar was not speaking to Kumaraswamy on Sunday. He was speaking to the workers. The booth-level volunteers. The people who paste posters at midnight and ferry voters to polling stations on election day. These are people who follow party lines but also watch which way the wind is blowing. And the wind in Old Mysuru has just shifted quite considerably.
Shivakumar is now the Chief Minister. He is also a Vokkaliga leader the same community that forms the core of JD(S)’s traditional base. With him holding the top chair in the state, some of that community’s political loyalty is going to be contested in ways it was not six months ago. Shivakumar knows this. His message on Sunday was aimed at the people most likely to feel that pull.
Forty Years, One Constituency, One Metro Ride
There was another moment from Sunday worth noting, and it had nothing to do with speeches.
To get from Bengaluru to Kanakpura, Shivakumar took the Namma Metro. Boarded at Vidhana Soudha station, rode to Central Silk Board junction a journey of roughly 45 minutes chatting with fellow passengers along the way. No convoy. No road closures. No traffic snarls trailing behind an official motorcade.
“I don’t want to waste the time of the common man. When a CM travels, there will definitely be a lot of traffic issues. I just travelled about 45 to 50 minutes in the metro,” he told reporters afterward. Then he added something that cut a little deeper: “I’ll go to my village and greet the public who have been voting for me since 1985.”
Since 1985. That is four decades of one man and one constituency. There is something almost stubborn about that loyalty, on both sides. Kanakpura keeps electing him, and he keeps coming back this time as Chief Minister, on the metro, without a fuss.
A Day Packed With More Than Prayers
The full itinerary of Sunday’s visit covered more ground than most politicians manage in a week. Temple prayers at Kenkaramma the family deity and Kabbalamma, the clan deity his family has worshipped for generations. A stop at Doddalahalli, his native village, to pay respects at the memorial of his late father, Kempegowda. Meetings with villagers and longtime supporters. And then the public address where he chose, in front of an audience, to reach across the aisle to JD(S) workers.
Each of these things, taken alone, is unremarkable. Together, they form a picture of a politician who arrived in Kanakpura on Sunday with a very clear sense of what he wanted to accomplish spiritually, personally, and politically.
For now, the response from JD(S) has been silence. Kumaraswamy’s party has given no indication that it is interested in warming up to a Congress Chief Minister, and there is no reason to expect a dramatic change in that position anytime soon. The alliance of 2018 broke down for real reasons, and those reasons have not disappeared.
Still, Shivakumar has done what he came to do. He said it plainly, publicly, and on the record: the door is open. What happens next depends on whether anyone on the other side of that door finds it worth walking through.
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- Ananya Sharma
- Ananya Sharma
- Ananya Sharma
- Ananya Sharma
