Congress seeks probe into alleged sting attempts on Shivakumar, Satheesan

The Congress leadership has reportedly asked the Karnataka government to investigate alleged attempts to conduct sting operations targeting Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar and Kerala Chief Minister V.D. Satheesan, according to party sources.

The reported instruction follows Shivakumar’s account of a meeting with a businessman whose Meta smart glasses and questions about election strategy raised his suspicions.

Speaking to a Kannada television channel, Shivakumar said the visitor had sought an appointment to discuss business but instead spoke about politics and electoral analysis.

“An officer had fixed an appointment for a businessman to meet me. He took me to the ante-chamber and opened his laptop,” Shivakumar said.

The conversation then turned to political strategies and what could be done at individual polling booths, rather than the visitor’s company or business.

“He spoke to me like a psephologist,” the chief minister said.

“I grew suspicious of him, looking at his face and the glasses he was wearing, and I asked for an inquiry to be conducted on him and his background,” he added.

Shivakumar did not identify the businessman. He alleged that the man wore Meta smart glasses during meetings with him and Satheesan, but did not wear them when meeting Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu, a Union minister or another minister.

The chief minister also claimed he had credible information about planned sting operations targeting some of his Cabinet colleagues and knew who was involved.

The reported request for an investigation has not established whether any meeting was secretly recorded or whether a sting operation took place.