Bengaluru: For the first time, the Karnataka Cabinet is moving its meeting out of Bengaluru and into the state’s coastal belt. Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar’s government is scheduled to hold its Cabinet meeting in Mangaluru on September 18, a departure from the longstanding practice of convening the state’s highest decision-making body in the capital.
On the surface, the move is administrative. Politically, however, it carries considerably greater significance. By taking the Cabinet to Dakshina Kannada, the Congress government is entering a region where the BJP has enjoyed a particularly strong electoral and ideological presence for decades. With the 2028 Assembly election already influencing political calculations, the decision gives Shivakumar an opportunity to project the government’s presence in a part of Karnataka where Congress has struggled to establish sustained dominance.
The coastal districts of Dakshina Kannada and Udupi have long been associated with the RSS and its affiliates. The region has often been described as a “Hindutva laboratory” because of the extensive grassroots organisational network built there over several decades. The political foundations of this dominance can be traced back in part to the period of the Emergency, declared by Indira Gandhi in 1975. Opposition to the Emergency helped the RSS consolidate support across coastal Karnataka, while dissatisfaction with the Congress deepened.
That history makes the September 18 Cabinet meeting more than a symbolic change of location. It places the Congress government directly in a region that has remained one of the BJP’s strongest electoral territories.
The electoral numbers underline the challenge. Udupi was carved out of the undivided Dakshina Kannada district in August 1997. The two districts now account for 13 Assembly constituencies — eight in Dakshina Kannada and five in Udupi.
In the 2023 Assembly election, the BJP won all five seats in Udupi and six of the eight seats in Dakshina Kannada. Congress managed to win only the remaining two seats in Dakshina Kannada. Taken together, the BJP won 11 of the 13 seats across the two coastal districts.
The pattern is not new. For nearly three decades, the BJP has generally won the maximum number of seats in these two districts. The major exception came in 2013, when Congress won 10 of the 13 seats.
It is against this backdrop that Shivakumar’s decision to take the Cabinet to Mangaluru assumes political weight. The objective may not be to immediately overturn the BJP’s dominance, but to begin creating a political and organisational foothold ahead of the 2028 Assembly polls.
For Congress, the challenge is also connected to the changing political equations within the party. The party came to power in Karnataka in 2023 with 135 Assembly seats, with much of its success attributed to the social coalition associated with Siddaramaiah and the party’s AHINDA politics. AHINDA — a term combining minorities, backward classes and Dalits — has remained an important element of Congress’s electoral strategy in Karnataka.
But the political landscape has evolved since the 2023 election. Siddaramaiah’s exit from the chief minister’s office and his subsequent return to the centre of social justice and AHINDA politics have created another variable for the Congress leadership. With sections of the AHINDA coalition potentially dissatisfied after Siddaramaiah was asked to vacate the chief minister’s post, Shivakumar faces the task of building an electoral base that extends beyond the coalition that powered Congress in 2023.
The coastal region could be one part of that effort.
Rather than relying solely on ideological politics, Shivakumar appears to be positioning development as the principal language of his outreach to the coast. The state government has already directed departments to identify proposals relating to coastal Karnataka for consideration at the Mangaluru Cabinet meeting.
Tourism is expected to be an important component of that approach. Earlier this year, when he was Deputy Chief Minister, Shivakumar announced plans for a separate tourism policy for the coastal belt. The Karnataka Tourism Department has since described the coastal strategy as a Rs 1,260-crore roadmap under the “Brand Karavali” vision.
The political calculation is relatively straightforward: in a region where the BJP’s ideological network is deeply entrenched, Congress can seek to create a different basis for political engagement by emphasising jobs, tourism, infrastructure and economic opportunities.
The September 18 meeting, therefore, offers the government a platform to demonstrate that its attention extends beyond Bengaluru and to potentially announce measures aimed at the coastal districts. At the same time, it allows Shivakumar to establish a more visible political presence in an area where Congress has struggled for decades.
The BJP’s 11-seat hold over the 13 constituencies in Dakshina Kannada and Udupi will not be easy to dislodge. But Shivakumar does not necessarily need an immediate electoral reversal to make the exercise politically useful. Even a limited shift in a few constituencies could change the narrative around the 2028 contest.
The move to Mangaluru is thus significant precisely because of where the Cabinet is going. It takes the government into the BJP’s strongest coastal territory, places development at the centre of Congress’s outreach and signals that Shivakumar is beginning to look beyond the 2023 electoral formula.
With the 2028 Assembly election on the horizon, the September 18 Cabinet meeting could be an early indication of that strategy: instead of waiting for the electoral battle to arrive, Shivakumar is taking the government to the BJP’s political stronghold and attempting to build a new conversation around the Congress in coastal Karnataka.
