The party apparently ignored him to avoid a Vokkaliga overload at the top as both Shivakumar and chief minister H.D. With Lingayats, the other influential community, demanding a second deputy chief minister, Congress managers played safe and opted for Parameshwara. Suresh, who rose to the challenge of protecting the party MLAs soon after Karnataka threw up a fractured mandate this time. He had first led most of the 78 Congress MLAs to the same resort till B.S. Anand Singh and Pratapgouda Patil were the two Congress MLAs who had suddenly gone incommunicado.

Source: The Telegraph May 24, 2018 20:26 UTC