Karnataka CM tussle: Congress veteran Moily breathes fire; blames top brass of being blind | India News

NEW DELHI: Amid the ongoing leadership crisis in Karnataka over the chief ministerial post, veteran Congress leader M Veerappa Moily on Friday launched a broadside against the party high command, saying that “discipline” has to be brought into the party.Talking to news agency IANS, the former Union minister said that the high command representatives should have foreseen some of these developments in the state.“If you want to turn it into a political turmoil, yes, it can happen, but the leaders of the Congress party who are in responsible positions, and also our high command representatives, whoever they may be, should have foreseen some of these developments. It’s not a sudden development,” Moily said.“I will not comment on who should continue, whether he should continue or whether a new Chief Minister will come or not. I am not on that. First, discipline has to be brought into the party,” he added.This comes amid the ongoing tussle between Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah and his deputy DK Shivakumar over the top job in the state.The deliberation over the issue has now shifted to Delhi, as both DKS and Siddaramaiah are likely to meet Mallikarjun Kharge along with Sonia and Rahul Gandhi on November 30.Earlier, Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge played down the “internal conflict” within the party and said that the “high command” will sit together and deliberate on the issue.“Only the people there can say what the government is doing. But I would like to say that we will resolve such issues,” Kharge said.“People in the high command — Rahul Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi and I — will sit together and deliberate on this… We will give the medicine when required,” he added.This was the first acknowledgment by Kharge that there is indeed a power struggle between Siddaramaiah and his deputy DK Shivakumar in Karnataka.As soon as the Congress government in Karnataka completed its halfway mark on November 20, reports quoting Congress sources suggested that MLAs and MLCs from Shivakumar’s faction had camped in Delhi to push the party high command to make him the next chief minister.DK Shivakumar added to the speculations after he claimed that there had indeed been “a confidential understanding on leadership transition among five-six leaders” soon after Congress won a landslide in the 2023 elections.The deputy chief minister made the first reference to the power pact but stopped short of divulging more details. “This is confidential. I don’t want to speak publicly on this,” he said.