Janata Dal (Secular) patriarch and former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda has denied having any understanding with fellow Vokkaliga and Congress leader DK Shivakumar ahead of the May 10 Karnataka assembly elections.
“Do not unnecessarily try to scratch your head. No. No means no,” said Gowda, 89, in an interview with Hindustan Times when asked about talk of an understanding between the two.
Asked about Siddaramaiah, who defected from the JD (S) to Congress, becoming the only chief minister in recent years to get a full majority (2013), Gowda said those days are over. Responding to another question over the possibility of another fractured verdict, Gowda said there are so many leaders in that case. “There is DK Shivakumar and others. It was not like that in 2013. Today, there are various competent leaders in the Congress itself.”
The Congress, which is seen to be a frontrunner in the three-cornered contest, has faced tensions between the factions loyal to Siddaramaiah and the party’s state unit chief Shivakumar over the chief minister’s post.
Both Gowda and Shivkumar are Vokkaligas, who account for 15% of Karnataka’s population. Vokkaligas and Lingayats (17%) are the state’s two influential communities that have dominated its politics for decades. Lingayats moved away from the Congress in the 1990s to the BJP while a significant chunk of Vokkaligas rallied behind JD(S).
{{/usCountry}}Both Gowda and Shivkumar are Vokkaligas, who account for 15% of Karnataka’s population. Vokkaligas and Lingayats (17%) are the state’s two influential communities that have dominated its politics for decades. Lingayats moved away from the Congress in the 1990s to the BJP while a significant chunk of Vokkaligas rallied behind JD(S).
{{/usCountry}}Gowda said JD (S), which has held the key to government formation in Karnataka because of successive fractured mandates, in 2018 did not at all want to form the government with the Congress. “But [Rajasthan chief minister] Ashok Gehlot and Ghulam Nabi Azad [then of the Congress] came to this very house of mine to persuade me to have a coalition that we eventually did. I agreed after a long process of discussion.”
He added some Congress friends eventually ditched them. “That is why the BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party] is today in power.”