With the JD(S) and Congress yet to formalise a seat-sharing arrangement for the 28 Lok Sabha seats, Karnataka Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy on Tuesday said the JD(S) were not beggars to be bullied by their alliance partner. “If the Congress has decided to give us three or five or seven seats, I would like to say that we are not beggars. I would like to clearly state this,” Deccan Chronicle quoted him as saying. The CM, who was responding to a query by reporters in Mysuru, added, “The Congress leaders have not discussed this with me, so I have not thought of it.”
Former CM Siddaramaiah, however, appeared to ease the tension. Reacting to the CM’s statements, Siddaramaiah, who was in Bengaluru at a Youth Congress meeting, said, “No one needs to beg from anyone. This is a coalition government and neither JD(S) nor the Congress is a beggar.’’
The decision to form a pre-poll alliance for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls were taken by the top brass of the two parties in a press conference just a week after Kumaraswamy won the floor test after days of political uncertainty in Karnataka in mid-2018. The press conference was addressed by CM Kumaraswamy, KC Venugopal, former CM Siddaramaiah, DK Shivakumar and Congress Lok Sabha leader Mallikarjun Kharge.
At present, after the recent bye-poll victories, the Congress has 10 seats while the JD(S) has two.
According to the political grapevine, former Prime Minister and JD(S) patriarch HD Deve Gowda has agreed to lower his initial demand of 12 seats to 10 seats with the Congress maintaining that they will not give up any of the seats they currently hold.
With the JD(S)’s stronghold being limited to the Cauvery delta region of Old Mysuru, the party is assured of the seats in the Vokkaliga dominant regions. Other than that, they are seeking seats from Bidar, Vijaypura and Shimoga. With Deve Gowda touted to leave his stronghold of Hassan for his grandson Prajwal, the Congress might leave Bengaluru North seat, too, for the JD(S).