Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar on Friday fired a pointed reminder at his own party high command and rival Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, invoking Sonia Gandhi’s famous 2004 “sacrifice” of the Prime Minister’s post as a lesson in putting party before personal ambition. Speaking at a government function in Bengaluru, Shivakumar praised the former Congress president for stepping aside after the UPA’s victory and installing Manmohan Singh, saying, “She sacrificed power for the larger good of the party and the country. That inner voice is what true leadership follows.”

The remark, delivered with deliberate emphasis, instantly reignited the simmering power struggle within the Karnataka Congress. Shivakumar has never hidden his claim to the Chief Minister’s chair, which he believes was promised to him for a fixed term after the party’s 2023 assembly win. With Siddaramaiah completing two and a half years and showing no signs of stepping down, Shivakumar’s public invocation of Sonia Gandhi’s sacrifice is being read as a thinly veiled message: if the high command expects loyalty and sacrifice from leaders, it must honor its own commitments.

Party insiders say the timing is significant. Congress has suffered a string of electoral setbacks in 2025 (Haryana, Maharashtra, and several bypolls), making internal stability in its few remaining bastions like Karnataka critical. Yet the open tussle between the two top leaders has already cost the party dearly in local body polls and threatens to fracture its vote bank ahead of crucial civic elections next year.

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Shivakumar’s supporters insist he is only reminding the leadership of the “Dharamshala agreement” allegedly brokered by Sonia Gandhi herself in 2023, under which the CM post was to be shared. Siddaramaiah’s camp, meanwhile, dismisses any such written pact and points to the Chief Minister’s continued popularity and administrative record.

With Rahul Gandhi and Mallikarjun Kharge yet to intervene decisively, Shivakumar’s Sonia reference has turned a quiet cold war into an open challenge: will the Congress high command enforce the same spirit of sacrifice it once celebrated, or let Karnataka slide into factional chaos at a time the party can least afford it?

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