Janata Dal (Secular) leader HD Kumaraswamy will take oath as Karnataka chief minister on Wednesday and will face a floor test in the Vidhan Soudha on Thursday.

The swearing-in ceremony has been preceded by much politics though, and just a week earlier it seemed unlikely to many analysts that he would become the next chief minister.

Kumaraswamy’s Janata Dal (Secular) party, which won 37 seats in the 224-member state Assembly, and the Congress, with 78 seats, formed an alliance and staked their claim to form the government. The Bharatiya Janata Party won 104 seats.

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However, after the Karnataka election results, Governor Vajubhai Vala had invited the BJP to form the government although the Congress and its ally together had more seats. The Congress and the JD(S) had moved the Supreme Court against Vala’s decision. The top court had asked BJP leader BS Yeddyurappa to prove his majority in the Assembly immediately, while the governor had given him 15 days to do so. Yeddyurappa had then resigned as chief minister before the trust vote.

Here is some of Scroll’s coverage of the episode and its impact on the larger political situation:

  • BJP’s defeat in Karnataka shows a challenge has finally been mounted to Modi’s shock and awe tactics: Opposition parties have realised that the best away to counter the prime minister’s insatiable appetite for absolute power is to unite and pool resources.  
  • Karnataka has shown the way for Lok Sabha 2019. But it is a bumpy road ahead for Congress-JD(S): There are internal contradictions in this alliance. And the BJP will be breathing down the new government’s neck at every turn.  
  • Karnataka debacle looms large in meeting of BJP’s coalition partners in North East: Amit Shah criticised the Congress, claiming that it only used the region to bolster its numbers in Parliament.  
  • ‘Rahul Gandhi was foolish to visit temples,’ argues writer Vivek Shanbhag on the Karnataka election outcome: The writer says BJP’s success in Karnataka is because its agenda there is not as divisive as it is elsewhere.  
  • With Karnataka, add Deve Gowda to list of leaders who could be the Opposition’s PM candidate in 2019: The fast-paced developments in the southern state have given new life to talk of an anti-BJP coalition. But who will be its face?  
  • If the JD(S)-Congress alliance is unholy, what does that say about the BJP in Bihar or Kashmir?: The BJP believes in the people’s mandate, but only when it is convenient.  
  • What if Supreme Court had not intervened?: Would the BJP have used the time offered them by the governor to ‘horse-trade’ their way into power?  
  • BJP’s defeat in Karnataka has exposed a chink in the armour of Narendra Modi and Amit Shah: BS Yeddyurappa’s admission that his party failed to lure away Congress legislators will provide a big boost to the opposition party ahead of the 2019 election.  
  • What front pages had to say about the Karnataka trust vote: The newspapers highlighted the role of the Supreme Court in reducing the time allotted for Yeddyurappa to prove his majority.