The JD(S)-Congress Coordination Committee is a puppet in the hands of former chief minister Siddaramaiah and it has failed to give a stable government in Karnataka, alleged JD(S) state president A.H. Vishwanath, who announced his decision to quit the post. The Hunsur MLA, who had expressed his desire to quit the post twice earlier, had been pacified by the JD(S) supremo and former Prime Minister H.D. Devegowda. But this time, Vishwanath has offered his resignation owning moral responsibility for the party’s drubbing in the just concluded Lok Sabha polls, where the JD(S) won only one out of the seven seats it had contested. However, party insiders say the veteran is cosying up with the Bharatiya Janata Party.
A few hours before the JD(S) legislature party meeting in Bengaluru, on Tuesday, Vishwanath held a press meet to call out the failure of the coordination committee.
“It is a namesake committee. Even after a year, the committee has failed to evolve a common minimum programme. Despite being the party president, I have been kept out of the committee. There has been no honest effort to run this coalition smoothly. Even the KPCC chief Dinesh Gundu Rao has no say in the decisions of the coordination committee,” alleged Vishwanath.
Expressing his gratitude to Devegowda for giving him a “political rebirth”, Vishwanath said that the JD(S) had given him the ticket to contest from Hunsur in the last assembly elections after he quit the Congress party following differences with the party’s state leadership. “It has been a year since the coalition government came into being and Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy is carrying huge schemes like the farm loan waiver on his shoulders and has also remained closer to the people. But I am now compelled to state that I am disappointed as the party president as there has been no significant development barring in a few departments. Kumarawamy is running the government despite his ill-health and constant harassment from the coalition partners. The elected representatives and the party should work in tandem, but this has not been possible,” he said.
In the letter addressed to Devegowda, Vishwanath has made serious charges against the coalition partners. “The Congress chose to ignore our plea to allow the JD(S) to contest from the Mysuru-Kodagu parliament seat. But they refused and instead hatched a plot to field you (Devegowda) from a constituency held by a Congress MP. The Tumkur Parliament constituency was a trap to ensure a humiliating defeat to you, which will prove costly to the state too,” said Vishwanath.
Further, the Kuruba leader, who is also from Siddaramaiah’s hometurf Mysuru, alleged that in Mandya, the party candidate Nikhil Kumaraswamy lost the elections only because the Congress and also the JD(S) leaders refused to take the responsibility and the decisive Kuruba votes too got disturbed.
Meanwhile, the Devegowda family has been trying to convince Vishwanath not to resign from the post. However, the miffed leader has remained adamant.
