Breakfast diplomacy fails to hide deep cracks in Karnataka Congress leadership

The breakfast looked delicious in the picture but seemed barely touched as Siddharamiah, Congress Chief Minister of Karnataka, and his Deputy, D.K. Shivakumar, broke bread and attempted to make peace after the latest slugfest over power — a battle that has virtually left Karnataka ungoverned for the past month. No battleground was spared, from the high command to the media and social media (tweet versus tweet), as DKS went public with his claim of a power-sharing promise after half the term — first and exclusively reported in SWAT Analysis. And Siddharamiah, sensing the weakness of the Congress high command, refused to budge.

Astute readers who read last week’s column would have seen this coming, since we reported that a putative power coup had been averted.

So who ate humble pie? And the bigger question: when will Karnataka, a global IT hub, get the governance and infrastructure it deserves?

A public rebellion by DKS — a Gandhi family loyalist for decades — and after the death of Ahmed Patel, the Congress party’s main crisis manager when it came to resorts (to sequester MLAs) and resources, was a nightmare for the leadership. Rahul Gandhi often took public pride in the fact that DKS went to jail but didn’t leave the party.

Loyalist turns rebel?

So what pushed the loyalist to turn rebel? In reality, after serial defeats in Maharashtra, Haryana (expected to be won by the Congress), Delhi and Bihar, the anti–Rahul Gandhi voices are reaching a crescendo. Senior leaders — at least those who remain — are wary of the issues he raises, such as “vote chori” and personal allegations against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which don’t seem to stick with the public.

Says a senior leader: “We all know that there are issues with the partisan handling of elections by the Election Commission (EC) but, Gandhi even when he raises it dilutes the message because no other leader of the INDIA alliance chimes in with him. His lacklustre leadership has ensured that the INDIA alliance (which had the BJP bothered for a hot minute) is history.”

This was the scenario facing DKS, who had been promised a turn at power at the halfway mark of the government.

Public acknowledgment

Sources say DKS realised that even if pressed by the high command, Siddharamiah — ensconced in the CM’s chair — wouldn’t budge. But he wanted a public acknowledgment of the promise made to him, and more importantly, recognition that he was the party’s indisputable successor, since he sensed ambition among some senior colleagues. Interestingly, this includes Mallikarjun Kharge, Congress president. DKS also refused to give up his power base as state Congress chief and managed to scuttle Siddharamiah’s planned assertion of authority through a reshuffle.

Sources also say DKS and his loyalists had been frozen out of the government by Siddharamiah, and this will now change as DKS prepares to run a campaign to get the Congress re-elected in two years — with him as the CM face. It’s a wary truce, time bought by the intervention of Sonia Gandhi. But if past examples are any indicator — Sachin Pilot versus Ashok Gehlot, Jyotiraditya Scindia versus Kamal Nath — such pacts, and their non-implementation, have proved suicidal for the Congress in states like Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh.

No election at halfway mark

The only reason the Karnataka government has not collapsed is that no Congress MLA wants to face an election halfway through the term and go back to an angry voter. And the voter is indeed angry — because the Congress government has been completely overwhelmed by the big fight between the two leaders, with governance going for a toss.

And the Congress high command looks on helplessly. “Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold,” William Butler Yeats wrote in The Second Coming in 1919. It seems prophetic for the Congress party today.