BENGALURU: Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, Deputy CM DK Shivakumar and over 100 Congress MLAs will be taking part in the Grand Old Party’s rally in New Delhi on Sunday, against alleged ‘Vote Chori’.
A posse of Congress leaders from both the Siddaramaiah and Shivakumar camps, including ministers RB Thimmapur and N Cheluvarayaswamy, MLC BK Hariprasad, former minister HM Revanna, KPCC working president Manjunath Bhandari, landed in Delhi on Saturday. Bhandari, a close confidant of AICC president Mallikarjun Kharge, speaking to reporters, did not rule out the leaders from Karnataka meeting high command leaders to discuss the current political situation of Karnataka.
Shivakumar told reporters in Bengaluru on Saturday that they have started a fight for voters’ rights. The fight started from Karnataka, and a massive rally will be held in Delhi’s Ramlila Maidan on Sunday, he said and accused the BJP of trying to carry out election fraud through Chilume, a NGO.
Shivakumar, who is also the president of the state unit of the Congress, said thousands of party workers from Karnataka, over 100 MLAs and MLCs are participating in the rally. The Congress is taking out the rally under the leadership of the Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi, to create awareness among the people about vote theft, he said.
Asked if he would meet the Congress top brass during his visit to the national capital, the DCM said, “I will reach Delhi late on Saturday night. I have to give a reply in the notice related to the National Herald case, and I will give them all the documents.”
Shivakumar, along with his younger brother and former Bengaluru rural MP DK Suresh, left for Delhi on Saturday evening. According to sources, they are likely to meet the high command leaders and convey a message that Shivakumar broke the ice with certain MLAs over change in leadership.
He had been convincing the MLAs that there was a pact over change in CM post, that Siddaramaiah should step down after completing 2.5 years in the office, at the high command level when the party came to power in 2023, according to sources.
On the sidelines of the winter session in Belagavi, Shivakumar attended a dinner hosted by his supporters in which some 30 Congress MLAs took part.
He also held talks for over one hour with forest minister Eshwar Khandre, who is an aspirant for the KPCC president post, with whom the women and child welfare minister Lakshmi Hebbalkar had also joined. Earlier, Siddaramaiah had taken part in a dinner hosted by former MLA Firoz Sait at which several Muslim MLAs who reportedly threw their weight behind the former to continue as CM.