The Congress high command on Friday (October 23, 2026) asked Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar to start an inquiry into an alleged sting operation attempt on him.

The top leadership is also said to have expressed displeasure that Mr. Shivakumar chose to go public before instituting a formal investigation, sources told The Hindu. 

The Chief Minister, in an interview with a Kannada television channel, had claimed that a businessman wearing Meta AI glasses recently met him in, what he suspected, was an attempted “sting operation.” 

Mr. Shivakumar said he had grown suspicious of the eyewear. “He wore Meta glasses when he met me and Keralam Chief Minister V.D. Satheesan. But he was not wearing glasses when he met Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu,” he had said. 

Mr. Shivakumar had, in the course of a Cabinet meeting, also warned his Ministers that some of them might fall victim to sting operations.