Amid rebellion in Karnataka Congress over Cabinet formation, former Minister M.B. Patil and working president of party's state unit Dinesh Gundu Rao, who were denied ministerial berths, on Saturday met Congress chief Rahul Gandhi.
According to sources, Patil met Gandhi and then had a meeting with party's senior leader Ahmed Patel.
The central leadership had called the disgruntled leaders for talks in order to resolve the matter after state Congress leadership could not placate them.
Considering the seniority of Patil in the party, he could be given a ministerial berth in the Karnataka Cabinet.
Patil was very upset on being denied a ministerial post and he had told reporters that "his self-respect was hurt".
Earlier, there were reports that the party would rotate ministers to placate disgruntled MLAs and that non-performers could be dropped after six months.
On the situation in Karnataka over distribution of portfolios, Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera said: "We are all here to serve the people to honour our manifesto, to honour the commitments we made to the people during our campaign, to the farmers, to the poor, to the unemployed youth and so on and so forth.
"These are processes and it is a very vibrant democracy which is full of sound and light. We are here to honour our commitments. These processes have to be lived through, gone through and then we come out with it."
As per the agreement between the alliance partners, the cabinet posts and portfolios are shared in the ratio of 21:11, with the Congress getting 21, including the Deputy Chief Minister rank, as it has 78 legislators in the hung assembly, and the Janata Dal-Secular (JD-) 11, including Chief Minister rank, as it has 36 lawmakers.
JD-S leader H.D. Kumaraswamy and Congress state unit president G. Parameshwara were sworn-in as Chief Minister and Deputy Chief Minister on May 23.
Of the 25 ministers, 14 are from Congress and 9 from Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) and one each from Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and Karnataka Pragnyavanta Janata Paksha (KPJP), which are allies of both the coalition partners.