D. K. Shivakumar Biography: Locally known as DK or DKShi, Shivakumar has come a long way since he was promoted from the Youth Congress to the main Congress organisation following a schism in the party’s Karnataka chapter four decades ago.
D. K. Shivakumar Biography
Early Years
DKS was born and raised in the Kanakpura hamlet of Alahalli within a lower middle-class family. His father, Kempegowda, was a renowned farmer and social worker. He is a member of the numerically dominant Vokalliga community. After M. S. Krishna’s departure, he is presently the most prominent Vokalliga leader in Congress.
DKS attended elementary school in Kanakpura before moving to Bangalore for higher education. His years at R. C. College Bangalore altered the trajectory of his existence. First, he served as a student leader at R. C. College, where he communicated student concerns to the appropriate authorities. His remarkable interpersonal communication skills made him extremely popular at the time. Soon thereafter, he received an invitation from the Congress party to join the Youth Congress, which he could not refuse. In 1983, he was appointed state secretary of the Youth Congress and became a sensation for his ardent efforts to bring pro-student issues to the attention of legislators and administration.
Political career
D.K. Shivakumar began his political career in the early 1980s as a student leader and rose through the Congress party’s ranks over time. In 1989, he was elected to the Karnataka Legislative Assembly from the Sathanur constituency in the Mysuru district, his first election victory. At the time, he was only 27 years old and he ran for office on a Congress ticket. Shivakumar was subsequently re-elected from the same assembly district in 1994, 1999, 2004, 2008, 2013, and 2018 elections.
During his time as chief minister, Vilasrao Deshmukh worked closely with D.K. Shivakumar in 2002, when he faced a vote of no confidence. A week before the election, D.K. Shivakumar hosted the Maharastra MLAs at his resort on the outskirts of Bangalore. This rescued the government of Deshmukh.
Before his 2017 election to the Rajya Sabha from Gujarat, he assisted his party’s leadership in relocating 42 Gujarat Congress MLAs to his resort in Bengaluru to prevent them from joining a rival political party. Consequently, this contributed to Ahmed Patel’s election victory.
He is credited with playing a crucial role in the formation of the coalition government between the Indian National Congress and the Janata Dal (Secular) in Karnataka after the 2018 election.
Additionally, he is a close confidant of party leaders Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi. Shivakumar is one of India’s wealthiest politicians. In 2018, when he submitted his nomination for office, he disclosed total assets of 840 crore.
On 2 July 2020, D. K. Shivakumar officially succeeded Dinesh Gundu Rao as president of the KPCC.
Controversies
He identified himself on his election affidavit as an educator and a social worker. However, Shivakumar drew attention when he declared a wealth of Rs 251 crore in his 2013 election affidavit. According to a TOI report, this made him the second wealthiest minister in the country at the time.
Aside from this, it is alleged that he engaged in illicit granite mining. In 2015, he and his family received notices from the Karnataka High Court.
His cabinet colleague HS Mahadev Prasad later gave him a clean bill of health despite his involvement in land-grabbing cases alongside his sibling DK Suresh in the Shantinagar Housing Cooperative Society case.
Personal Life
He has a younger sibling who is also a politician, D. K. Suresh. With Usha, Shivakumar has two daughters, Aishwarya and Aabharan, and a son, Aakash, born in 1993. His eldest daughter is married to Amartya, the son of V. G. Siddhartha, the founder of Café Coffee Day.
