Siddaramaiah

Early life

He was born to Siddarame Gowda and Boramma in a remote village called Siddaramanahundi in Varuna Hobli near to T.Narasipura of Mysore district in a farming family. He had no formal schooling until he was ten but went on to do his B.Sc and Bachelor of Law from Mysore University. He is a leader of the Kuruba Gowda community. He is the second amongst five siblings.

Career

Siddaramaiah was a junior under a lawyer, Chikkaboraiah, in Mysore and later taught law for some time.

Political career

Before 1978, he began political career when Nanjunda Swamy, a lawyer in Mysore, spotted him at the district courts as a law graduate. He was asked to contest and was elected to the Mysore Taluka. He contested on a Bharatiya Lok Dal ticket from Chamundeshwari constituency and entered the 7th Karnataka Legislative Assembly in 1983. This was a surprise victory for all and it earned him name and fame in the Old Mysore region.

Later he joined the ruling Janata Party and became the first president of the Kannada Surveillance Committee (Kannada Kavalu Samiti), set up to supervise the implementation of Kannada as an official language. During the mid-term polls in 1985, Siddaramaiah was re-elected from the same constituency and became Minister for Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Services. In Chief Minister Ramakrishna Hegde's government, he handled diverse portfolios such as Sericulture, Animal Husbandry and Transport at different stages.

He first suffered defeat in the 1989 Assembly elections, beaten by a veteran Congress leader, M. Rajasekara Murthy. Later in 1992, he was appointed as Secretary General of Janata Dal, which H. D. Deve Gowda had also joined. He was elected again in the 1994 State Elections and became the Minister for Finance in the Janata Dal government headed by Deve Gowda. He was made Deputy Chief Minister when J. H. Patel became Chief Minister in 1996. After the split in the Janata Dal, he joined the Janata Dal (Secular) faction of Deve Gowda and became the president of its state unit. However, he lost in the 1999 state elections. In 2004, when the Indian National Congress and JDS formed a coalition government with Dharam Singh as Chief Minister, he was again appointed as Deputy Chief Minister.

Congress

In 2005, after differences with H. D. Deve Gowda, Siddaramaiah was expelled from JD (S). He wanted to form a regional party "ABPJD" in the state after quitting the JD (S), but he did not because regional parties formed earlier in Karnataka had not survived. He subsequently garnered mass support from the backward classes and joined the Congress at a large public meeting held in Bangalore, in Sonia Gandhi's presence. He won the Chamundeshwari bypolls held in December 2006, by a margin of 257 votes against M. Shivabasappa of JDS, despite a fierce campaign against him by Deve Gowda, Chief Minister Kumaraswamy and Deputy Chief Minister Yeddyurappa in the constituency. In the 2008 state Assembly elections, he contested from Varuna Constituency and was re-elected for the fifth time.

He won the 2013 election from the same constituency on 8 May 2013. He was elected as the leader of the Congress legislative party in the Karnataka assembly on 10 May 2013. He had previously announced that the 2013 Assembly election would be his last election.

Chief Minister of Karnataka

Siddaramaiah was elected as Chief Minister after Congress adopted secret balloting to select the new chief minister. He led the Indian National Congress to victory by achieving an absolute majority in the 2013 Legislative Assembly election.

Personal life

Siddaramaiah is married to Parvathi and has two sons: Rakesh, who did a few film roles and Yathindra, who is a doctor. He is an Atheist. Siddaramaiah's elder son Rakesh died in July 2016 in Belgium due to multiple organ failure. As revealed by the Facebook profiles of some of his friends who were traveling with him, they were possibly attending ‘Tomorrowland’, one of the world’s biggest electronic dance music festivals, held annually in Belgium.

Positions held