Senior Congress leaders gun for Siddaramaiah, Gundu Rao

Gunning for Leader of Opposition in state Assembly Siddaramaiah and KPCC president Dinesh Gundu Rao, a group of senior Congress leaders on Tuesday decided to urge the party high command to accept these two leaders’ resignation immediately and appoint new leaders.

Former Union Minister K H Muniyappa, who chaired a meeting with Congress MPs from Karnataka, is learnt to have decided to meet Congress president Sonia Gandhi and submit a report on the revival of the party soon.

In the meeting, which was attended by Rajya Sabha members B K Hariprasad, Nasir Hussain, G C Chandrashekhar and Lok Sabha member D K Suresh, they also also decided to urge Sonia to replace Karnataka in-charge General Secretary K C Venugopal with some other senior leader.

Alleging that the party failed to give tickets to its suitable candidates, the leaders also decided to urge Sonia to fix responsibility for those who approved the tickets at the high command level.

They also decided to apprise the party top brass on how the party lost all elections in the state in the recent past including, Assembly, Lok Sabha and by-polls.

The leaders also decided to meet other leaders including former Union Ministers Mallikarjuna Kharge, M Veerappa Moily, Former Ministers D K Shivakumar and H K Patil to mobilise campaign against Siddaramaiah.

Separately, Venugopal met Mallikarjuna Kharge and closeted with him for more than hour. Both the leaders have decided to meet all the state leaders and submit a report to Sonia Gandhi about the defeat.

Speaking to reporters, Venugopal welcomed the resignation of Siddramaiah and Dinesh Gundu Rao. However he did not reply when asked whether the party will accept their resignations or not.