BENGALURU: As if to calm the anger simmering among DK Shivakumar’s supporters against Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh, Sonia’s man friday and veteran Congress leader Ahmed Patel visited Tihar jail to check on the Vokkaliga heavyweight.
A day after D K Suresh met H D Deve Gowda in a clear display of community camaraderie, Congress leaders Patel and Anand Sharma paid a visit to Shivakumar. The visit comes days after Shivakumar’s fans expressed disappointment over AICC interim president and former PM Manmohan Singh choosing to meet P Chidambaram and not Shivakumar, lodged in the same Tihar Jail. Despite the Congress state representatives clarifying that jail rules allow visitation of only one inmate, Shivakumar’s fans, especially in his home turf of Ramanagara, were irate.
Patel and Sharma’s visit was the first such from any Congress leader to Shivakumar ever since he was lodged at Tihar. While a host of Congress leaders visited Shivakumar in the hospital soon after his arrest, none had paid him a visit at Tihar. Shivakumar, who is under the custody of the ED in a Prevention of Money Laundering Act case, has, on multiple occasions, claimed that he had been under the BJP’s radar ever since he helped Patel get elected to the Rajya Sabha in 2017.
Patel owes his Rajya Sabha seat to Shivakumar, who had guarded and hosted MLAs from Gujarat in 2017 when alleged poaching attempts were being made by the BJP. The visit also comes at a time when Congress was seeming to be maintaining a distance from Shivakumar. Unwilling to create a void that could attract other players to fill in, Congress central leadership has made its attempts with Patel’s visit to stitch up loose ends, if any, concerning Shivakumar.