Seven days after the declaration of election results, Siddaramaiah has been sworn in as Chief Minister of Karnataka for the second term on Saturday afternoon along with state Congress president DK Shivakumar as the Deputy Chief Minister.
The swearing-in ceremony took place at 12.30 pm at Kanteerava Stadium in Bengaluru. This is the same place where Siddaramaiah took oath as the state's CM for the first time in 2013.
The event was attended by former Congress president Rahul Gandhi, the party’s national general secretary Priyanka Gandhi, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar among several others.
After officially taking charge as Karnataka’s chief minister, Siddaramaiah, addressing his supporters at the event, promised to fulfill ‘five guarantees’ within hours.
He said, “We will give an administration that people have expected from us. Five guarantees will be passed in the cabinet meeting and an order will be issued to implement them today itself.”
The five guarantees that were promised by the party before elections were:
Gruha Jyothi- 200 units of free electricity per month to every household
Gruha Lakshmi Scheme- Rs. 2,000/month to every woman head of household
Uchita Prayana- Free bus travel in government buses for all women across the state of Karnataka, only for Karnataka residents
Yuva Nidhi- This year’s freshers- up to two years- starting this year Rs. 3,000/month for unemployed graduates and Rs. 1,500/month for unemployed diploma holders
Anna Bhagya- Free 10kg of rice per person per month to Below Poverty Line families
Attending the event, Rahul Gandhi said, “After Congress’ victory, many things were written as to how Congress won this election, different analyses were done, but I want to say that Congress won because we stood with the poor, Dalits and Adivasis, backwards. We had truth, poor people. BJP had money, police and everything, but the people of Karnataka defeated all their powers.”
Meanwhile, eight MLAs took oath as ministers in the new Karnataka cabinet. The ministers are- G Parameshwara, KH Muniyappa, KJ George, MB Patil, Satish Jarkiholi, Priyank Kharge, Ramalinga Reddy and BZ Zameer Ahmed Khan. However, the portfolios haven’t been distributed to them yet.