The Shivakumar Ministry (also referred to as the D. K. Shivakumar ministry) is the 35th Council of Ministers of Karnataka, headed by D. K. Shivakumar of the Indian National Congress. It was sworn in on 3 June 2026 and succeeded the Second Siddaramaiah ministry. The Governor of Karnataka, Thawarchand Gehlot, administered the oath of office and secrecy to the members of the council of ministers at the Glass House of Lok Bhavan, Bengaluru, at 4.05 pm. Prior to the ceremony, the sitting Speaker of the Karnataka Legislative Assembly, U. T. Khader, resigned from the Speakership to accept a ministerial berth in the new cabinet, leaving the post vacant pending election of a successor by the House. The Speakership remained vacant for nearly two months, with Deputy Speaker Rudrappa Lamani — in office since July 2023 — presiding over sittings of the Assembly in the interim. On 3 August 2026, the Congress high command named Gurupadagouda Patil to succeed Khader as Speaker; Lamani, inducted into the Cabinet the same day, vacated the Deputy Speakership in turn and was succeeded by Mankala Vaidya, elected on 18 August 2026.
Shivakumar's accession followed an internal Congress power-sharing arrangement under which Siddaramaiah resigned as Chief Minister after the midpoint of the term begun with the 2023 Assembly election. The transition marked the first time since 2004 that the Congress had placed a Vokkaliga leader at the head of a Karnataka government, a development widely read as a challenge to the Janata Dal (Secular)'s traditional hold on the community and as a recalibration of the party's AHINDA-based social coalition ahead of the next Assembly election, expected by May 2028.
The ministry was initially constituted with 14 members (including the Chief Minister), all carried over from the previous government except for U. T. Khader and Yathindra Siddaramaiah. Within days of formation, Cabinet Minister Ramalinga Reddy briefly tendered his resignation over a portfolio dispute; the Congress high command rejected the resignation on 6 June 2026 and Reddy continued in the ministry. The cabinet's composition at formation drew criticism from the opposition and from within the Congress for including no woman minister. On 3 August 2026, exactly two months after the ministry's formation, the Congress high command cleared the names of 20 further ministers, but only 19 of them were sworn in that day — the induction of the 20th, MLC Gayathri Shanthegowda, was deferred because she had not yet herself taken oath as a member of the Karnataka Legislative Council following a disputed 2021 Council election that the Karnataka High Court resolved in her favour in July 2026. As a result, the ministry stood at 33 members (including the Chief Minister) after the expansion, one short of the state's sanctioned strength of 34, and remained entirely male. Following B. Nagendra's resignation on 28 August 2026, the ministry fell to 32 members, with two vacancies against the sanctioned strength of 34.
Background
Swearing-in ceremony The swearing-in of the members of the council of ministers was originally planned to be held on the steps of Vidhana Soudha before a large public gathering, but was relocated to the Glass House of Lok Bhavan for a more modest ceremony, following concerns over peak-hour traffic disruption in Bengaluru. Governor Thawarchand Gehlot administered the oath of office and secrecy to a total of 14 ministers at 4:05 pm on 3 June 2026, including Chief Minister D. K. Shivakumar and Deputy Chief Minister G. Parameshwara.
Shivakumar took his oath in the name of Veera Gangadhara Ajja, the seer of the Ajjayya Mutt in Nagarbhavi, Bengaluru, whom he regards as his spiritual guide, while holding a copy of the Constitution of India. Parameshwara took oath in the name of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar; M. B. Patil in the name of Basavanna and Siddeshwar Swami; and Yathindra Siddaramaiah in the name of the Constitution. U. T. Khader and Eshwara Khandre took oath in the name of God.
The ceremony was attended by senior Congress leaders including AICC president Mallikarjun Kharge, Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi, former Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, Telangana Chief Minister Revanth Reddy, Kerala Chief Minister V. D. Satheesan, Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu, AICC General Secretaries Randeep Singh Surjewala and K. C. Venugopal, Congress parliamentarian Gaurav Gogoi, and Congress leader Rajeev Shukla. Chief Justice of the Karnataka High Court Vibhu Bakhru was also present, as were film personalities including actors Dhruva Sarja, Shiva Rajkumar, Ramya, and Dhananjaya, and cricketer Anil Kumble. The event also drew religious leaders, student representatives, farmers' representatives, Dalit community leaders, and Kannada activists.
Earlier on 3 June, Shivakumar met former Prime Minister and Janata Dal (Secular) chief H. D. Deve Gowda and former Chief Minister and Bharatiya Janata Party leader B. S. Yediyurappa. Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated Shivakumar following the ceremony, stating that the Centre would work closely with the state government for the welfare of the people.
Portfolio allocations for the initial 14 members were formally notified by the Governor on 4 June 2026 under Notification No. GS 57 GOB 2026, issued in exercise of the powers under Clause (3) of Article 166 of the Constitution of India read with Rule 5 of the Karnataka Government (Transaction of Business) Rules, 1977.
Power-sharing arrangement Following the 2023 Karnataka Assembly elections, the Indian National Congress formed the government under Siddaramaiah, with D. K. Shivakumar — the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) president who had led the party's election campaign — serving as Deputy Chief Minister. An internal power-sharing arrangement within the party envisaged a leadership rotation, under which Shivakumar would be elevated to Chief Minister after the midpoint of the term. Shivakumar was then an eight-time member of the Karnataka Legislative Assembly, having first been elected from the erstwhile Sathanur constituency in 1989 and representing Kanakapura since 2008. Widely regarded as the Congress party's chief troubleshooter and crisis manager in Karnataka, he was appointed KPCC president in March 2020 by AICC president Sonia Gandhi, succeeding Dinesh Gundu Rao.
This arrangement was not formally announced but was widely acknowledged in political circles, and eventually triggered months of internal speculation from late 2025 onward as Shivakumar and his supporters pushed for the transition. Siddaramaiah resigned on 28 May 2026 following direction from the Congress high command, with Governor Gehlot accepting the resignation on 29 May. The decision to resign was finalised after nearly seven hours of meetings at the AICC headquarters in New Delhi, including a one-on-one discussion between Rahul Gandhi and Siddaramaiah; Siddaramaiah subsequently proposed Shivakumar's name at the CLP meeting held at Vidhana Soudha on 30 May, where Shivakumar was unanimously elected as leader of the Karnataka Congress Legislature Party. The transition was overseen by AICC General Secretaries Venugopal and Surjewala. Shivakumar was subsequently sworn in as Chief Minister on 3 June with Parameshwara as his deputy, making him the second Vokkaliga Chief Minister of Karnataka from the Indian National Congress. The previous Vokkaliga Chief Ministers of Karnataka from the Indian National Congress was S. M. Krishna, who served from 1999 to 2004; H. D. Kumaraswamy of the Janata Dal (Secular), a Vokkaliga, held the office in 2006–07 and again in 2018–19.
Political significance Shivakumar's elevation marked the first time the Congress had placed a Vokkaliga leader at the head of a Karnataka government since S. M. Krishna served as Chief Minister from 1999 to 2004 — a gap of more than two decades within the party. Vokkaligas, a dominant agrarian community concentrated in the Old Mysore region and the districts surrounding Bengaluru, had for much of the intervening period looked to the Janata Dal (Secular) and its patriarch H. D. Deve Gowda as their principal political vehicle. Shivakumar's ascent was therefore widely read as a direct challenge to JD(S)'s traditional hold over Vokkaliga voters, reinforced by the head of the Adichunchanagiri Mutt — the community's most influential religious institution — publicly declaring his support for Shivakumar's elevation in November 2025.
The transition also represented a shift in the Congress's internal caste axis within the state, from the AHINDA (Alpasankhyataru (minorities), Hindulidavaru (backward classes), and Dalitaru (Dalits)) coalition anchored by the outgoing Chief Minister Siddaramaiah of the Kuruba community, to a Vokkaliga-fronted leadership. Retaining the AHINDA vote bank — which had been central to the Congress's 2023 landslide — while simultaneously consolidating Vokkaliga support, was identified by analysts as the central electoral challenge facing the new government ahead of the next Assembly election, expected by May 2028. The cabinet's construction — spanning eight communities — was widely interpreted as an attempt to address this tension: three Dalit ministers covered both the right-hand and left-hand SC sub-groupings; three Lingayats balanced the other dominant-community flank; and the Deputy Chief Minister post went to a senior Dalit leader, G. Parameshwara. The 3 August 2026 expansion continued this balancing act, adding further Lingayat, Vokkaliga, SC, ST and minority representation; see Cabinet expansion below.
A further political challenge awaiting the ministry was the Karnataka Socio-Economic and Educational Survey (commonly referred to as the state's caste census), a comprehensive survey whose final report was submitted to the government in the final weeks of the Siddaramaiah administration. Leaked portions of the report suggested that the Lingayat and Vokkaliga communities were numerically smaller than widely perceived, with SC/ST, backward class, and OBC communities collectively constituting a large majority of the state's population. Formal acceptance and implementation of the survey's findings had the potential to reshape political representation and reservation policy — a particularly complex inheritance for a Chief Minister whose own community's numerical weight the survey had placed under scrutiny.
Early decisions Following the swearing-in ceremony on 3 June 2026, Chief Minister Shivakumar visited the Ajjayya Mutt in Nagarbhavi, Bengaluru — the seat of Veera Gangadhara Ajja, the seer in whose name he had taken his oath — before proceeding to Vidhana Soudha to formally assume charge. The first cabinet meeting was held on the same evening, at which ministers signalled that the five guarantee schemes and other programmes launched by the preceding Siddaramaiah government would be continued alongside new initiatives to be announced in due course.
The decision to retain the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) and Bangalore Metropolitan Region Development Authority (BMRDA) directly under the Chief Minister, rather than consolidating them with the Greater Bengaluru Development portfolio assigned to Krishna Byre Gowda, drew attention from political observers and real-estate stakeholders as a signal of Shivakumar's intention to retain personal oversight of Bengaluru's land and planning institutions.
Budgets