Mandya: “On November 3, the state will face three Lok Sabha and two Vidhana Sabha by-polls. In the last elections, we have observed, the pattern of voting due to which no party could form the government. This time we need to wait and watch”, said former chief minister Siddaramaiah.
Addressing the press conference in Hotel Surabhi, he said “We were in power earlier and according to the vote share percentage, the Congress received 38 percent, the BJP 36 percent and the Janata Dal (S) 19 percent. As the BJP had emerged as the single largest party, we wanted to make sure that a communally influenced party must be kept out of reach of power and that’s the reason we have formed the Congress-JD(S) coalition.”
Siddaramaiah said that they had already spoken in the coalition meeting about fighting the elections together and also form a “Mahaghatbandhan”, in order to suppress the BJP in the upcoming election.
He alleged that the BJP had seeded communal sentiments in the minds of the people and disrupted the nation’s economy. “That is the reason for the Mahaghatbandhan and we will flag off this united movement from Karnataka,” he said.
Speaking on the seat share, Siddaramaiah said that both the Congress and the JD(S) had come to a common conclusion of sharing the seats and providing support to each other’s candidates.
Slamming the BJP for its comment “Impure coalition”, he said that it had no rights to say this, as it had broken their alliance with the PDP (People’s Democratic Party) in Kashmir and joined hands with Nitish Kumar’s party in Bihar. This is the reason they have no rights to speak about the sanctity of the coalition, he said.
He reiterated that the Congress and the JD(S) had not diverted from their ideologies and were following their parties’ principles, whereas the BJP had always emphasised on communal ideologies.
Terming the Modi government a failure, he said that the government at the Centre had failed miserably in reducing the oil and LPG price.
Siddaramaiah said that the hopes of black money coming back to India had failed miserably. Demonetisation was another major failure, which not only affected the commoners but also devastated the Indian economy, he said.