Bengaluru: The Congress and Janata Dal (S) state coalition leaders had organised a joint press conference, here on Tuesday, March 19, at Ashoka Hotel, to announce their strategy of facing the Lok Sabha elections.
Addressing the joint press conference, JDS Supremo and former prime minister H D Deve Gowda said, “We will face the election based on the guidelines prescribed by the Chairperson of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Sonia Gandhi and AICC President Rahul Gandhi.”
“Our battle is against the Bharatiya Janata Party and the decision is left to the public”, added HDD.
He said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi must look into his party’s alliance with many small parties before commenting on Mahagathbandhan.
HDD assured that the state coalition would continue to be strong even after the Lok Sabha elections.
Regarding contesting the elections, HDD said that he was already old and it was very necessary to decide whether to contest or not.
“It is left to D K Shivakumar, Dinesh Gundu Rao, Siddaramaiah and H D Kumaraswamy to decide whether I need to contest or not”, he added.
Speaking about the candidates from Udupi-Chikkamagaluru constituency, HDD said that former MP Jayaprakash Hegde and former district in-charge minister Pramod Madhwaraj’s name was on the list including a lady candidate from Congress.
He said that the final list would be released soon after a collective decision.
Former chief minister and Chairman of Government-alliance Coordination Committee. Siddaramaiah said, “Our aim is to defeat BJP and prove their statement of ‘Congress Mukth Bharath’ (Congress-free India) wrong. I am confident that both the parties (Congress and JDS) will bear an impact in Lok Sabha elections and based on this, we have conducted several meetings.”
“As per the meeting, Congress and JDS have planned to win over all the 28 Lok Sabha seats”, he added.
Recalling the 2018 assembly elections, he said that they had a backlog only in Shivamogga, but with a very less margin of 50,000 compared to 2013 assembly elections where BJP had won with a margin of 3, 00, 000 votes.
Election campaign to begin from Mar 31
Siddramaiah announced that the Congress-JDS election campaign would begin from March 31.
He said, “We will request AICC President Rahul Gandhi to keep himself free on March 31, so that he can join us during the first Lok Sabha campaign. We want to spread a message to other states as well that it is not easy to defeat the coalition.”
“We have thought of starting the campaign from Bengaluru-Mysuru region”, he added.
“The coalition party leaders will decide the roles and responsibilities that the party workers have to take up within few days”, he added.
Regarding Deputy Chief Minister Dr. G Parameshwar’s absence in the meet, Dinesh Gundu Rao said, “Please do not create a nuisance out of it and assume out of the box. He is not here due to personal reasons. He has gone to attend a private function.”
KPCC Working President Ishwar Kandre, KPCC President Dinesh Gundu Rao, Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy, Water Resources Minister D K Shivakumar and other leaders were present.
