Karnataka   

Congress spurned offer for tie-up, says Kumaraswamy

— Photo: K. Gopinathan

Sweet success: Janata Dal (Secular) leaders and workers offering sweets to H.D. Kumaraswamy at the party office in Bangalore on Wednesday.

BANGALORE: Janata Dal (Secular) leader and former Chief Minister HD. Kumaraswamy has said that his party decided to go it alone in the byelections only after the Congress spurned its offer for an alliance.

Addressing presspersons here on Wednesday, Mr. Kumaraswamy said the Congress, which drew a blank in the byelections, was itself to blame. “Do not blame the Janata Dal (Secular) or its national president H.D. Deve Gowda for the failure of the two parties to come an understanding for the bypolls,” Mr Kumaraswamy said referring to a Congress leader’s reported statement that the tie-up failed to materialise on account of Mr. Gowda’s rigid stance on the issue.

Mr. Kumaraswamy recalled that it was Mr. Gowda who first proposed an alliance between the Janata Dal (Secular) and the Congress to work for the defeat of the Bharatiya Janata Party, which had engineered defections from both the parties. “I even went to New Delhi and discussed the matter with Congress leaders and assured them that the oneupmanship will not come in the way of seat adjustment,” he said.

When asked whether the Janata Dal (Secular) was open to the idea of a tie-up with the Congress for the next Lok Sabha elections, Mr. Kumaraswamy said the party’s second line leadership was averse to the idea of such an understanding. “The question does not arise at this juncture,” he said.

Though the Janata Dal (Secular) managed to win three of the eight Assembly constituencies, Mr. Kumaraswamy said the results did not match the party’s expectations.

“We expected to win at least five seats. We lost Deodurga and Doddaballapur owing to delay in finalising candidates,” Mr Kumaraswamy said. “The bypolls were an acid test for our party, which had been written off after the debacle in the May 2008 Assembly polls,” he said.

He said the party would launch a State-wide campaign to expand its support base by taking out padayatras. “We will select 500 young activists of the party in each district and they will go to each and every village and create awareness about the party’s achievements when it was in power. The process of selecting the young workers will be completed by Sankranti and the campaign will be launched on January 26,” Mr Kumaraswamy said. Referring to BJP’s victory in five constituencies, he said there was little to gloat over the “achievement”, which had been accomplished through “devious and unlawful” means.

Referring to the defamation suit filed against him by Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa, who has claimed to have suffered mental agony after the charges of corruption were levelled against him, Mr. Kumaraswamy wondered whether the BJP leaders gave a thought to the psychological distress and suffering he underwent when the bribery charges of Rs. 150 crore were made against him.

He said he was ready to face the defamation case in the court as the Managing Director of Maverick Holdings Pvt Limited himself had publicly made a statement indicating “money had to be paid in the Government just like one pays donation in a temple.”

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Congress spurned offer for tie-up, says Kumaraswamy

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