BENGALURU: Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah and his deputy DK Shivakumar have been summoned to Delhi for a damage-control meeting Tuesday with Lok Sabha LoP Rahul Gandhi as continued outrage over the June 4 Bengaluru stampede that killed 11 RCB fans puts Congress – accused of playing pass-the-buck – on a sticky wicket.A bureaucrat in the CMO said Siddaramaiah, who maintains that the state govt didn’t put a foot wrong, received what he described as “a sudden call” from the Congress brass. He and Shivakumar were asked to prepare a detailed briefing of the administration’s response to the stampede outside Chinnaswamy Stadium ahead of IPL-winning RCB’s victory parade, the official said. Congress’s urgency to firm up a strategy to counter the storm comes a day after the opposition doubled down on its demand for political accountability, including a three-day special legislative session to discuss what led to the stampede.Sources said AICC’s Karnataka minder, Randeep Singh Surjewala, will be with Rahul at the scheduled 11am meeting with Siddaramaiah and Shivakumar. The latter was in the national capital Monday for an official engagement, but returned to Bengaluru late evening. He will be back in Delhi in time for the meeting with the high command, the sources said. For now, the three distinct Congress camps in Karnataka led by Siddaramaiah, Shivakumar and state home minister G Parameshwar are speaking in one voice as a credibility crisis stares the party in the face. The state govt has been accused of making police the scapegoats after five senior cops, including the Bengaluru’s former city police commissioner B Dayananda, were suspended the evening after the stampede.
