Karnataka tussle: Congress high command wanted to avoid national media glare

In order to avoid media glare during Parliament Session, the Congress high command decided not to summon Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and his Deputy D K Shivakumar to the national capital to address the leadership tussle, and told them to have deliberation between them at Bengaluru itself.

Since the Winter Session of the Parliament is scheduled to begin on December 1, the party leadership wanted media attention on the session as it wanted to target the NDA by raising key issues, including SIR and American tariff on Indian goods.

Summoning the CM and DCM to Delhi, during the session, would divert media focus from  issues planned to corner the Union government to Karnataka politics, a senior leader in the party told DH.

The party high command forced immediate intervention on Karnataka developments after they sensed escalation of power tussle issue following the war of words by CM and his deputy on micro blogging site X on Thursday.

Unhappiness over social media posts

Both AICC General Secretary (Organisation) K C Venugopal and General Secretary (in-charge Karnataka)
Randeep Surjewala dialled to Siddaramaiah and Shivakumar and expressed their unhappiness over their social media posts and told them to delete it immediately. Interestingly, instead of deleting it, both the camps blamed each other for starting the social media posts. Both the leaders were in no mood to relent and did not delete the posts. 

On Nov 27, 2025, at 8.21 am, Shivakumar in a veiled dig at Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, posted a cryptic message on X stating: “Word power is world power.”

To counter this, the CM official X handle, at 6.39 pm the same day posted “Our word to Karnataka is not a slogan, it means the world to us.”

When the matter on social media posts started beaming on electronics media, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, who was in touch with senior leaders Rahul Gandhi, Surjewala and Venugopal, decided not to invite both the CM and his deputy to national capital, and instead ask them to talk to each other and settle the ‘issue’ there itself.  

Subsequently, Venugopal dialled the CM and asked him to invite DCM for breakfast on Saturday morning. He also asked Shivakumar to invite Siddaramaiah for lunch in a couple of days. Venugopal also asked Shivakumar to cancel his Delhi visit and stay put in Bengaluru.

The party top brass wanted to send an “all’s well” message to the state and party workers through the breakfast and luncheon meetings between warring leaders, sources said.

Separately, Kharge, during his meeting with Rahul on Saturday, also raised Karnataka developments, where both the leaders decided to direct both Siddaramaiah and Shivakumar not to come to Delhi and not to send any legislators’ delegation to the national capital.

However, sources in the Congress high command told DH that the party has cleared the CM and DCM’s visit to Delhi for a meeting with Lok Sabha members from the state to discuss the issues pertaining to the state, next week. Both the leaders were also invited to attend a Congress rally against the Election Commission on ‘Vote Chori’ on December 14 at Ramleela Maidan here.

The high command may give time to Siddaramaiah and Shivakumar after mid-January to discuss party affairs and the political developments, said the leader.