The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Civic polls: JD(S) to go it alone

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Thursday, Sep 13, 2007
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Civic polls: JD(S) to go it alone

Staff Correspondent

BJP has called a party legistors’ meet today

Bangalore: The Janata Dal (S) has decided not to have electoral alliance with the BJP for the civic elections. It will contest the nearly 5,800 seats on its own.

Sources in the Janata Dal (S) told The Hindu here on Wednesday that the party leadership had relegated the all-important subject of power transfer to the BJP to the background for the present. The former Prime Minister and JD(S) president, H.D. Deve Gowda, and Deputy Chief Minister B.S.Yediyurappa travelled by the same flight from New Delhi to Bangalore late on Tuesday night. They spoke to each other for a brief while and did not touch on the issue of power transfer.

Mr. Deve Gowda told this correspondent that he was neither in touch with the Congress leaders nor with the BJP leaders. “I had been to Delhi to attend the last day of the Lok Sabha session and returned after the session was adjourned sine die. Where is the need to meet the BJP leaders. The JD (S) will deal with the issue at the right time. If need be, I will meet A.B. Vajpayee, L.K. Advani and BJP president Rajnath Singh after the civic elections.”

By deciding to go it alone in the civic elections, the JD (S) has obliquely indicated that it was drifting away from the alliance with the BJP. The argument now is that “we have always maintained an equi-distance from both the Congress and the BJP and will continue to do so. We formed a government with the Congress earlier and now with the BJP only because of the fractured mandate in the 2004 Assembly elections.”

The former Prime Minister virtually spent the whole day on Wednesday signing the ‘A’ and ‘B’ forms to be given to the official candidates of the party for the elections. Mr. Deve Gowda and the State unit president Merajuddin Patel finalised the first list of the party candidates at a meeting in Hubli over the last weekend.

Meanwhile, the BJP State unit has convened a meeting of its party legislators in Bangalore on Thursday to review its preparation for the polls.

Sources in the BJP said party senior leaders would hold separate meetings with the MLAs from different districts before the legislature party meeting.

The meeting is expected to finalise the party’s strategy for the polls.

Though the main agenda of the meeting is the polls, there is a speculation that the transfer of power might also figure in the discussion.

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