Deve Gowda urges Rahul to cool 'resentment' of Cong MLAs on seat sharing
Bengaluru, Mar 15: Former Prime Minister and JDS supremo H D Deve Gowda Friday requested Congress chief Rahul Gandhi to cool the reported resentment of some party MLAs over the coalition government's seat-sharing arrangement to avoid political acrimony ahead of the coming Lok Sabha elections.
Gowda also said that he had not made up his mind on contesting from North Bengaluru.
"I am totally satisfied with the seat-sharing arrangement between our party and the Congress. We had demanded 10 seats, but got eight, considering that Congress is a major party.
All said and done, I do not want to create any political tension between our parties. I told Rahul Gandhi to move ahead with whatever seat-sharing arrangements we have arrived at.
There is hardly any time left for us. Our main aim is to defeat BJP," he told PTI in a telephonic interview from Arunachal Pradesh.
The coalition partners on Wednesday had announced that the JDS would contest from eight Lok Sabha constituencies and Congress from remaining 20 constituencies in Karnataka.
The announcement has reportedly sparked resentment among some Congress leaders, who have demanded cancellation of the seat sharing arrangement on the grounds it was impractical and detrimental to the coalition's electoral prospects.
Gowda said the coalition partners would overcome these 'minor hiccups' on or before the March 19 coordination committee meeting andhoped workers of both parties would realise BJP is their main opponent.
The March 19 meeting would be attended by Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy, Coordination Committee Chairman Siddaramaiah, KPCC President Dinesh Gundu Rao and Deputy Chief Minister G Parameshwara, he said.
The meeting would try to find solutions to minor problems, including the resentment in Congress aspirants and later chalk out dates and places of public rallies,Gowda said.
Asked if he was keen on contesting from North Bengaluru, Gowda said "I have honestly not made up my mind.
Last night Dinesh Gundu Rao requested me to fight from North Bengaluru and promised all help in the election."
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Two injuries, one DNF, a DQ as India end messy World Relays campaign
Gaborone (Botswana) (PTI): Amoj Jacob and Ragul Kumar got injured during the men's 4x400m and 4x100 races respectively as India ended their World Athletics Relays campaign in disappointment on the second day of competitions here on Sunday.
The Indian camp had high hopes of making the 2027 World Championships in the men's 4x400m relay but the team did not finish (DNF) the race as Jacob suffered cramps and pulled out of the race after taking the baton from the first leg runner Dharamveer Choudhary. Rajesh Ramesh and Vishal TK were to run in the third and fourth legs.
Those teams which could not qualify for the 2027 Beijing World Championships by reaching the final round of each of the six relay events on Saturday were given another chance in the second qualification round on Sunday.
The top two teams in each of the two heats (in all six relay events) booked the Beijing ticket on Sunday.
India will now have to try and qualify for the World Championships through the Top Lists of the World Athletics, which is a long and tedious process.
In the men's 4x100m race, third leg runner Ragul Kumar fell down the track after failing to hand over the baton inside the exchange zone to fourth leg runner Gurindervir Singh, which clearly showed the lack of coordination among the runners.
Harsh Santosh Raut and Animesh Kujur ran the first two legs.
The Indian quartet was disqualified and Kumar was seen being taken away from the Field of Play with the help of the volunteers.
It was a comedy of errors in the case of the women's 4x100m race, which saw the baton being dropped during an exchange between first leg runner Tamanna and second runner Nithya Gandhe, though the Indians finished the race in 53.09 seconds.
Gandhe started running quite a distance, but after realising that the baton was not in her hand, she turned and ran back to pick it up.
The only silver-lining for the Indian contingent was the national record time in the mixed 4x100m relay race, though the quartet of Ragul Kumar, Nithya Gandhe, Animesh Kujur and Sneha SS finished sixth in heat number two with a time of 41.35 seconds, bettering the previous national mark of 42.30 seconds set in March in Chandigarh.
The mixed 4x400m relay quartet of Theerthesh P Shetty, Kumari Saloni, Nihal William and Rashdeep Kaur ended at fifth in heat number one with a time of 3 minutes and 19.40 seconds.
On Saturday, all the five Indian relay teams had failed to make it to the respective final rounds and thus missed out on the 2027 World Championships berths.
