New Delhi, Jan. 18: Two days before the Hyderabad plenary, H.D. Deve Gowda has taken the Congress by surprise.

Although the former Prime Minister’s son Kumaraswamy is being seen as the mastermind of the Karnataka collapse, many suspect Gowda would not be unhappy with it. He had never been comfortable about the Congress leading the coalition.

“It’s a deadly blow and we were caught by surprise,” a Congress general secretary said.

Sources said Gowda had told Sonia Gandhi’s political secretary Ahmed Patel this week that nothing precipitate would be done, at least till the views of the Janata Dal (S) grassroots workers were taken.

Gowda reportedly told Patel he would meet the Congress chief on February 8 after meetings with party workers at the taluka and panchayat levels because he wanted to do a cost-benefit analysis of leaving the coalition. The sources disputed that Sonia had refused to give Gowda time.

The sources said the Congress was “prepared” to distance itself from Gowda’s bete noire Siddaramaiah, who broke away from the Dal (S) last year to form the All India Progressive Janata Dal. Gowda apparently resented the Congress’s perceived closeness to Siddaramaiah.

“We did not utter a word when he kept weaning away Congress activists into his party. It was conveyed to him that our understanding with Siddaramaiah was limited to the zilla panchayat elections because we wanted to finish off the BJP in north Karnataka,” a source said.

“Gowda had no problem with this. But he thought he would sweep the polls and when that didn’t happen, the problems began.”

Fingers are being pointed at AICC general secretary A.K. Antony, who is in charge of Karnataka, for not being clued in to what was going on, despite reports in the local media that the BJP was trying to spirit away Kumaraswamy.

The CWC is packed with Karnataka members, notably Oscar Fernandes, B.K. Hari Prasad, Margaret Alva and Veerappa Moily. Sources asked how none of them had any idea of what was happening.