Karnataka power tussle: Kharge says issue will be resolved after discussions with Rahul, Sonia

While Siddaramaiah has put the onus on party high command to put a 'full stop to the confusion', Shivakumar has spoke about a 'secret deal' between 'five to six of us' on sharing power

New Delhi: Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on Wednesday said he, along with senior party leaders Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi, would resolve the power tussle issue in Karnataka. 

"Only the people there can say what the government is doing there. But I would like to say that we will resolve such issues. People in the high command — Rahul Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi and me — will sit together and deliberate on this...We will give the mediation that is required," Kharge told a news agency here.

Kharge and Rahul Gandhi are likely to meet in Delhi in the next 48 hours. After that Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and Deputy Chief Minister D K Shivakumar will be summoned to the national capital, possibly on Friday, for another round of meeting. Sonia Gandhi is likely to attend this meeting. 

The power tussle within the ruling party has intensified in the recent weeks amid murmurs about a change of Chief Minister in the State after the Congress government reached the halfway mark of its five-year term on November 20 in the backdrop of a rumoured "power-sharing" agreement involving Siddaramaiah and Shivakumar in 2023.

The talk of leadership tussle has refused to die down, with Siddaramaiah putting the onus on the party high command to put a "full stop to the confusion", even as Shivakumar has said that there is a "secret deal between five to six of us" in the party on the issue of sharing power.