DKS stays back in Delhi, holds separate meeting with Kharge amid tussle in Karnataka Congress

Deputy Chief Minister D K Shivakumar, also the KPCC president, met Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge in Delhi on Sunday.

His meeting with Kharge comes at a time when a section of ministers is increasingly demanding that Shivakumar be divested of the KPCC president’s post and additional posts of DyCM be created to placate powerful communities. 

The demands are seen as a ploy by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah’s camp to weaken Shivakumar.

To counter this, supporters of Shivakumar have been seeking that their leader be elevated as CM. The growing factionalism has put the Congress on a sticky wicket in the state.

Shivakumar is learnt to have discussed these issues with the party president, especially the manner in which Cooperation Minister K N Rajanna has been calling for a new president for the party’s state unit.

A senior party functionary told DH that Shivakumar - who stayed back in the national capital for a separate meeting with Kharge on Sunday - may have sought the high command’s intervention to stop the CM’s camp from attacking him. He had accompanied the chief minister in the latter’s meetings with the party’s central leaders, including Kharge, on Saturday.

He is said to have demanded that the party’s top brass allow him to continue as the state party president till the completion of the elections to local bodies and byelections to three Assembly seats. 

Sources said that the AICC may soon intervene to bring about a truce between the warring camps.