No alliance with Congress: HD Devegowda
Bengaluru: Janata Dal (Secular) supremo H D Deve Gowda on Tuesday ruled out having pre-poll alliance with the ruling party Congress, citing time constraint.
Speaking to reporters in Bengaluru, Gowda said that earlier in the day, members of the Samvidhana Rakshanegagi Karnataka had met him and urged him to forge an alliance with the Congress to ensure the "communal" BJP's defeat in the elections. "But where is the time to do this? They have said that the BJP should be defeated in the elections," he said.
Gowda also said that his conversation with the members of the organisation had been misinterpreted by the media.
After the members of the organisation sought the secular forces to unite, Gowda is learnt to have told them to ask the Congress to release its list on seat sharing with the JD(S).
Gowda, however, made it clear that he was not entertaining any such thoughts. "I was saddened by these speculations. The JD(S) has formed an alliance with the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). The party is also exploring a pre-poll alliance with the Samajwadi Party (SP). There is no time to explore alliances with any other parties," he added.
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Ex-minister Ramanath Rai hits out at BJP leader Ashoka for ‘irresponsible’ comments on KC Venugopal
Mangaluru: Congress leader and former minister B Ramanath Rai slammed BJP leader R Ashoka for calling AICC General Secretary KC Venugopal an agent of the party high command, and asked if the general secretary and other office-bearers in the BJP were commission agents too.
Rai, who addressed a press meet at the Congress office in the city on Friday, expressed fury over the recent comments of the BJP leader that Chief Minister Siddaramaiah was presenting himself in a shameless manner in public life. Ashoka, who is also Leader of the Opposition (LoP) in the Karnataka Legislative Assembly, had said that the Congress government had ‘broken every previous record on corruption-related controversies’.
“Ashoka has spoken with sheer ignorance and displays his lack of maturity, as he often does while facing the media. KC Venugopal has been working at organization of the party and it is unbecoming of Ashoka to criticize Venugopal as he did,” Rai told reporters.
“Being in a responsible position, how acceptable is it for Ashoka to pass disrespectful, random comments about another leader who also holds a responsible position? If KC Venugopal is indeed an agent of the party high command, what should we consider BJP leaders to be? Are they brokers?” he asked
Commenting on Ashoka’s allegations of corruption in the Congress government in Karnataka, Rai pointed out, “The KSRTC land was sold to private parties when he (Ashoka) was transport minister. We can find several such cases across the state, which need to be probed.”
The former minister, however, refused to comment on the incident that occurred at Mangaluru airport during CM Siddaramaiah’s visit to the city recently.
Former mayors Ashraf and Shashidhar Hegde, Congress activists Vishwas Kumar Das, Subhodaya Alva, Shabeer, Baby Kundar, Padmanabha, Nazeer Bajal and Prem were present.
