Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah and D.K. Shivakumar, the deputy CM and also the Congress state unit chief, met over breakfast Saturday and came out talking of unity with a heavy dose of high command sprinkled across the conversation.

The power tussle between the Karnataka chief minister and his deputy had left the Congress high command scrambling to find a solution palatable to both the warring leaders.

The truce, most likely a temporary one, between Sidda and DKS came after a prod from the Congress high command. Alapuzzha MP and Congress general secretary K.C. Venugopal, who is also in charge of Karnataka, had called up Siddaramaiah.

“Venugopal told me to invite DKS for breakfast and talk to him,” Siddaramaiah told the media during the post-breakfast news conference at his official residence, Cauvery, where the two met.

“We have discussed many issues. The most important is the 2028 Assembly elections for us and we discussed a strategy to ensure that the Congress returns to power.

“We will do whatever the high command tells us,” he added.

Congress sources said the call from Venugopal would not have come without the clearance of leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi and Mallikarjun Kharge, the Congress national president.

Since the party came to power in the southern state in 2023, supporters of DKS have been demanding that he be made the chief minister replacing Sidda. A two-and-half-year power sharing deal was also floated by DKS and his supporters, which the loyalists of the chief minister have denied, per sources.

On Saturday both the chief minister and the deputy chief minister evaded replying to whether the power-sharing deal had been discarded for good.

“This government was formed under Siddaramaiah and we will follow what the high command has told us. Politically we are one, in the government we are one. There are no factions,” said DKS, sitting next to the chief minister.

One of the reasons behind the sudden urgency shown by the Congress’s top leadership to bring Sidda and DKS on the same table is a threat by the BJP in Karnataka to bring a no-confidence motion against the chief minister.

The winter session of the Karnataka Assembly is scheduled to begin from 8 December.

In the 224-member Assembly, the Congress has 135 MLAs while the BJP and JDS have 66 and 19 members each. Though the Opposition does not have the required numbers to topple the government, any split in the Congress legislature party would have been a disaster.

Specially so close on the heels of the Congress’s dismal showing in the Bihar Assembly polls.

“They can bring a no-confidence motion, adjournment motion, anything they want to do. They are the Opposition and it is their job to oppose us. But we are capable of running the government,” said DKS.

The importance of DKS is unquestioned within the party. He is the only Congress leader in the country who has been allowed to be a minister as well as the state unit chief, bypassing the one-person-one-post formula of Rahul Gandhi.

DKS is an efficient organiser and also holds the purse strings for the cash-strapped grand old party.

“Our party is in a difficult stage across the country. Karnataka will play an important role in the revival of the Congress in 2029 [when the next Lok Sabha elections are due),” he said.