Bengaluru: When Yathindra Siddaramaiah declared Friday that his father, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, would complete a full five-year term in office, he ruffled some feathers—particularly those of Deputy Chief Minister and state Congress president D.K. Shivakumar.
“Yathindra is our high command. Let us accept what he says with great reverence,” Shivakumar, the principal challenger to the CM’s post, said, visibly irritated by the frequent statements made by the 45-year-old Congress MLC.
This wasn’t the first instance that Yathindra shared his unsolicited views on the topic, though his comments appeared to have resonated differently this time. Party sources told ThePrint a significant reason for this is Yathindra’s growing clout, which has allowed interference in administrative matters.
From dictating orders to demanding transfers of officials, the list of allegations continues to pile up against the chief minister’s son.
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The energy department row
Last week, accusations surfaced that Yathindra had interfered in the state’s energy department, forcing an unsavoury incident involving senior cabinet minister K.J. George.
George, the state’s energy minister, is believed to have offered to resign from the cabinet in a fit of rage over a notice issued to Pankaj Kumar Pandey, managing director of the Karnataka Power Transmission Corporation Limited (KPTCL), allegedly at the behest of Yathindra.
Pandey, who has since been moved out of KPTCL, was said to have been summoned by Yathindra “urgently”, sources said. But Pandey was in a meeting with George at the time, so he was unable to attend to the summons.
“This was perceived as a snub and instructions were given (to the chief secretary) to issue a show-cause notice and a possible suspension order. Despite George’s intervention and vouching for Pandey’s presence in the KPTCL meeting, the order on Pandey was not taken back immediately. George then offered to quit since he felt unvalued by the CM,” a source aware of the developments said on the condition of anonymity.
George has since denied the allegations, even defending Yathindra as a “good boy”.
But the MLC’s repeated remarks on the leadership tussle in Karnataka—stemming from the so-called understanding within the Congress that the state’s top post would be shared between Siddaramaiah and Shivakumar over the five-year term—have continued to attract focus.
From ‘doctre’ to politician
Yathindra was a practising pathologist and had little to do with politics—a craft considered the propriety of his career-politician father and older brother.
But during the peak of Siddaramaiah’s first term as chief minister in July 2016, Yathindra’s older brother Rakesh died of multi-organ failure while vacationing in Belgium.
Until his death, Rakesh was seen as the heir apparent to Siddaramaiah, tending to his father’s assembly constituencies and largely overseeing the affairs in their home district of Mysuru.
Despite moulding himself as a socialist and opposing Congress’s family-based politics, Siddaramaiah changed his ideals and needed a successor to carry forward his legacy. Consequently, Yathindra was pulled into politics to fill the vacuum left by his brother.
Yathindra, until his political journey, was a self-confessed introvert. Like his mother, he kept his distance from politics and the public eye. He was known as ‘Doctre (doctor sahib)’ and rarely ever seen as a public figure.
“If my brother were alive, I wouldn’t have entered politics at all,” he told this reporter years ago.
On the eve of the 2018 assembly elections, he was visibly uncomfortable when large crowds gathered around him and his public speaking was considered meek in comparison to his father’s refined oratory skills.
At one point, Siddaramaiah appointed five people, dubbed the ‘Pandavas’, to help tutor his son’s public speaking skills, sources said.
Controversies
Yathindra found himself in the thick of a scandal in mid-2016. It was alleged that a firm in which he served as director was favoured in a tender given to set up laboratories in government hospitals. A year later, Karnataka’s Anti-Corruption Bureau, which comes under the CM’s purview, gave him a clean chit.
His name in recent controversies has prompted the Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to call him “super CM”.
B.Y. Vijayendra, the incumbent state BJP chief and son of former chief minister B.S. Yediyurappa, was also referred to as “super CM” during his father’s tenure.
Earlier this week, Karnataka’s leader of Opposition R. Ashoka alleged that those who sought liquor licences were asked to take a delegation to the CM or his son to get necessary approvals.
In the past, too, there have been instances where Yathindra was allegedly seen yelling at officials and dictating orders.
In November 2023, he was heard speaking to his father and then a person named Mahadev, dictating orders of a list. At the time, former chief minister H.D. Kumaraswamy alleged that Yathindra was dictating terms on the transfer of government officials.
In January 2024, a man who allegedly heckled and hurled abuses at Yathindra at a public event in Gundlupet was arrested.
Some party leaders have also raised questions on why there has been no notice served to Yathindra, who frequently speaks on the change of guard while MLAs H.D. Ranganath and H.A. Iqbal Hussain have been pulled up for their remarks on the topic.
Late last year, Yathindra stoked another controversy when he spoke about Siddaramaiah’s successor.
At a public event in November 2025, the son praised Public Works Department Minister Satish Jarkiholi, calling him a “capable and deserving successor” to Siddaramaiah.
Yathindra did not respond to ThePrint’s calls, requesting comment, till Saturday afternoon.
(Edited by Prerna Madan)
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