Bengaluru: “I have clearly said that without taking Siddaramaiah, who was Chief Minister for five years, into confidence, Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi all of a sudden came and said Kumaraswamy is the next Chief Minister, it was their wrong decision,” said JDS supremo H D Deve Gowda yesterday.
Once again targeting Siddaramaiah for the collapse of the Congress-JDS coalition government in Karnataka, Gowda said some Congress leaders could not see Kumaraswamy as the CM and so wanted to topple the government.
The former prime minister had told a newspaper that he held Siddaramiah responsible for the collapse of the government and but did not name Siddaramaiah when talking about the issue on Wednesday.
16 MLAs had resigned from the ruling government. Most of the rebel Congress MLAs such as S T Somashekar, Byrati Basavaraj, MTB Nagaraj, Munirathna and K Sudhakar, were considered to be Siddaramaiah’s loyalists. On 22 July, Kumaraswamy-led coalition government’s 14-month long tenure came to an end after the confidence motion moved by him was defeated in the Assembly. On 26 July, B S Yediyurappa assumed power angd proved its majority in the Assembly two days later.
It is to be noted that several Congress legislators and Ministers demanded that their chief Siddaramaiah be made the Chief Minister. Following this, Kumaraswamy threatened to step down.
However, Siddaramaiah denied the allegation that he was the reason for the fall of the government. He said, “Rebel MLAs are trying to shift the blame on me after widespread public backlash against them for betraying & back-stabbing both the electorate & the party. Everything will be clear when the dust settles but by then they would have bitten the dust.”
Congress and JDS who were considered arch rivals joined hands in 2018 assembly elections and threw up a hung verdict to keep BJP led by BS Yediyurappa out of power. However, the 14-month-long tenure of the coalition government was embroiled in problems.