New Karnataka leader takes oath

Congress party leader K Siddaramaiah has been sworn in as chief minister of the southern Indian state of Karnataka in the state capital, Bangalore.

He was sworn in by Karnataka Governor HR Bhardwaj at a ceremony at Sri Kanteerava Stadium on Monday.

The ceremony was attended by tens of thousands of supporters.

Mr Siddaramaiah, 64, led his Congress party to a huge win in last week's assembly elections, winning 121 seats in the 224-seat chamber.

The Congress defeated the state's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party which won only 40 seats and the regional Janata Dal (Secular) which also won 40 seats.

Karnataka, home to India's information technology industry, was the only southern state to be ruled by the BJP.

The party lost ground there amid allegations of corruption against senior state party leaders.

Mr Siddaramaiah was chosen as chief minister on 10 May in a hotly-contested race, edging out M Mallikarjuna Kharge, party veteran and India's labour minister.

He is a mass leader who belongs to a numerically strong backward community of shepherds, says senior journalist Habib Beary in Bangalore.

Earlier a member of the Janata Dal (Secular) party, he quit seven years ago and launched a movement for the development of minorities, backward classes and low-caste Dalits, before joining the Congress.

He was appointed the opposition leader in the assembly to take on the BJP.

Mr Siddaramaiah has vast administrative experience and has served as finance minister in previous governments run by Janata Dal (Secular).

He has never hidden his ambition of becoming chief minister and, in the past, said: "I am not a hypocrite. It is a democratic aspiration."