“The difficulties you faced in the last five years, only you and I know,”Rahul Gandhi, the head of Congress, remarked. Rahul Gandhi, the head of the Congress, said on Saturday that the party’s success in the recent Karnataka Assembly elections was due to the support of the poor, Dalits, and Adivasis. The Congress leader vowed to provide the state with a “clean, non-corrupt government” while speaking at the swearing-in ceremony of the new Karnataka government.

“The difficulties you faced in the last five years, only you and I know,” said Gandhi. “After Congress’s victory, many things were written as to how Congress won this election, different analyses were done but I want to say that Congress won because we stood with the poor, Dalits, and Adivasis, backwards. We had truth, poor people. BJP had money, police and everything but the people of Karnataka defeated all their powers.”

At the Sree Kanteerava Stadium in Bengaluru today, veteran Congressman Siddaramaiah and KPCC President D K Shivakumar took the oath of office as Karnataka’s new chief minister and deputy chief minister, respectively. As Ministers in the Siddaramaiah Cabinet, Congress MLAs G Parameshwara, K H Muniyappa, K J George, M B Patil, Satish Jarkiholi, Priyank Kharge, Ramalinga Reddy, and B Z Zameer Ahmed Khan were also sworn in.

Rahul Gandhi and the party’s national president Mallikarjun Kharge both made the commitment to enact the party’s five primary election promises while speaking at the swearing-in ceremony of the new Karnataka government. Gandhi claimed that the Congress party’s success in the southern state allowed it to triumph against hatred.  “Love has won,” he added.

Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi, Mallikarjun Kharge, and other prominent members of the Congress attended the swearing-in ceremony. Other opposition party leaders there included MK Stalin, the chief minister of Tamil Nadu, Ashok Gehlot, the chief minister of Rajasthan, Sharad Pawar, and Farooq Abdullah, the former chief minister of J&K.

The Congress appointed Siddaramaiah as the chief minister and Shivakumar as his deputy following days of frantic negotiations. While DK Shivakumar, the KPCC president and a member of the Vokkaliga group, is credited with orchestrating the victory in Karnataka, Siddaramaiah, a 75-year-old leader of the backwards classes with more than 50 years of political experience, is one of the three remaining mass leaders of the state.