Upset & Betrayed Kumaraswamy Calls for Emergency Meet

After the defeat of the alliance, an angry Kumaraswamy has called for an emergence meet.

Bengaluru: An angry and upset Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy today called for an emergency meeting of the Janata Dal (Secular) in the afternoon.

Speculation is rife that HDK may break the alliance and may resign.
HDK feels that his alliance partner the Congress has betrayed him personally and at party level.

Right from the time when the leads started coming in, the alliance was heading for trouble in Karnataka. Leads coming in shows that the BJP is sweeping the state set to bag 23 of the 28 seats leaving the Congress way behind in 3 seats and JD(S) in one.

While the BJP swept the Hindi heartland, Karnataka is the only state in the south to go to the saffron party.

If the leads hold true, the JD(S)-Congress coalition government would be numbered. Kumaraswamy’s son Nikhil seems to be losing Mandya and Prajwal Gowda, son on HD Revanna, HDK’s brother, is losing in Hassan – a seat that was Deve Gowda’s backyard.

In 2014, the Congress had won 9 seats, while the BJP and JD(S) had bagged 17 and 2 seats respectively in the state.

The leads have three messages: the BJP is able to solidly retain its voter base that it had in the last Assembly elections; secondly, there has not been a transfer of Congress votes in many constituencies to the JD(S) and, thirdly, Congress supporters seem to have voted against the JD(S) in constituencies where Gowda’s party had no base.

But more worrisome would be the future of the state government. If the JD(S) manages to win just one or two seats, then the mistrust with the Congress will grow larger and dangerous to the very survival of the coalition.

Speculation is rife in political circles that the growing bitterness, animosity and mistrust among the  coalition partners would lead to a full-blown war between the Congress and JD(S) and that the coalition is unlikely to last.

Many Congress MLAs were just waiting to jump ship. Since the outing is disastrous to the party, these fence-sitters would just resign and force the majority number to dip reducing the Kumaraswamy government to a minority.

This is what opposition leader BS Yeddyurappa of the BJP has been saying.

Congress and JD(S) cadre had openly rebelled against the parties’ diktat and worked against the coalition’s candidates in several key constituencies.

This became evident in Mandya when a section of the Congress cadre supported independent candidate Sumalatha Ambareesh and refused to back Karnataka CM HD Kumaraswamy’s son – Nikhil Kumaraswamy.

Similarly, Congress workers had refused to support former Prime Minister and JD(S) supremo HD Deve Gowda, who contested from the Tumakuru segment.

In retaliation, the JD(S) cadre refused to support Congress candidate CH Vijayashankar in the Mysuru-Kodagu, Kolar and Chikkaballapur segments. JD(S) MLA from Chamundeshwari GT Devegowda had in April, told the media that the JD(S) workers in Mysuru had voted for the BJP.