Two days after Karnataka Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy said he was ready to resign, an angry HD Deve Gowda has warned the Congress national leadership to “intervene.”
"Things have already reached a final stage. Before the situation goes out of control, the Congress high command must intervene and impress upon their state leaders. I am seething with anger from within and watching the developments carefully,” the JD(S) patriarch said at the JD(S) Plenary Session held on Wednesday.
Kumaraswamy had offered to quit when asked to react on comments made by a section of Congress MLAs close to Siddaramaiah – one of them said that Siddaramaiah was the CM even now, while another said developmental work was going on a slow pace as Siddaramaiah was no longer the CM.
The MLAs were slapped with a show cause notice on the insistence of Karnataka AICC-in-charge KC Venugopal.
The former PM blamed his former protege Siddaramaiah for the tension between the coalition partners.
“He (Siddaramaiah) has been nursing a grudge against us as he thinks I scuttled his chances of becoming CM on two occasions. Once, when I vacated the post after being chosen as PM candidate in 1996 and secondly when we formed a coalition government with Congress in 2004,” he said.
A hung verdict in the May 2018 assembly elections led the Congress – with about 80 lawmakers– support the JD(S) with 37 legislators to form the coalition government on May 23. This after the BJP, with 104 MLAs, quit office on May 19 for failing to prove simple majority in the 225-member House.
“What pains me is that he (Siddaramaiah) in an interview to a television channel said twice that I could have gone to Delhi and ensured that he became the chief minister and that I did not. He also said that I did not impress upon Sonia Gandhi (then Congress chief) to make him the chief minister. He has been nursing this pain and anger for long now. But I have no hate. I am ready to discuss with him why I did not make him the chief minister on both occasions,” Deve Gowda added.