JD (S) leader HD Kumaraswamy said on Saturday that joining Congress and forming a coalition government with the party has destroyed the goodwill that he had earned from the people of the state and that he had maintained for 12 years.
The former Chief Minister said he fell into the “trap” and accused Congress leader Siddaramaiah of conspiracy, as he claimed that even the BJP had not “betrayed” him at that level.
Siddaramaiah replied that Kumaraswamy was an “expert at lying” and that shedding tears was the culture of his family.
“The goodwill that I had earned from the people of the state in 2006-07 (as CM) and that I had maintained for 12 years despite the great campaign against me for not transferring power to the BJP, everything was destroyed by joining to Congress, ”Kumaraswamy said.
Speaking to journalists in Mysuru, he said that he should not have joined the Congress that had campaigned against the JD (S) calling it the BJP’s ‘B-team’, but due to the insistence of the supreme HD Deve Gowda party, he agreed to form the coalition government.
“Now it has caused my party to lose steam … I fell into the trap, into the emotional feelings of Deve Gowda so that my party that had won 28-40 seats independently in the last three elections is suffering,” he said. said.
He argued that joining Congress was the reason for his party’s downfall and his personal goodwill.
However, Kumaraswamy clarified that he was not blaming Gowda for it, as he knows and respects his father’s lifelong commitment to secular identity.
As no party won a clear majority in the 2018 assembly elections, Congress-JD (S), which had fought each other during the elections, came together to form a government with Kumaraswamy as the chief minister to keep the BJP out of the power.
However, after the defeat in the Lok Sabha elections, which both parties fought in alliance, internal differences arose and due to the rebellion of some MLAs, the coalition government collapsed last year, and since then the leaders of Congress and JD (S) have been blaming each other. for it.
Siddaramaiah in his rebuttal asked if there was a goodwill for Kumaraswamy to blame Congress for losing him.
“Kumaraswamy is an expert in lying, he can lie according to the situation for the sake of politics … Did you appoint him Chief Minister even though JD (S) had 37 seats because of us? Shedding tears is the culture of the Deve Gowda family, nothing new in it, they can shed to appease or make someone believe ”, he added.
Kumaraswamy, responding to Siddaramaiah’s recent statement that there is always an internal understanding between JD (S) and BJP citing his meetings with Yediyurappa twice in recent months, said that the CLP leader should stop making such unsubstantiated accusations. .
“I meet openly, not in disguise … I don’t know who (Siddaramaiah) met recently?” Kumaraswamy said, adding that had he had such an understanding with the BJP, he would have continued as Chief Minister.
BJP and JD (S) had previously formed a coalition government in 2006 with Kumaraswamy as Chief Minister and Yediyurappa as his deputy, under a power-sharing formula of 20 months each.
However, the government collapsed because JD (S) did not transfer power to the BJP, which then won the next assembly elections and formed its first government in the south.
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