Daijiworld Media Network - Bengaluru (SP)

Bengaluru, Dec 2: In their addresses, senior Congress leaders, Ramalinga Reddy, B K Hariprasad, Dr G Parameshwar, Veerappa Moily, and Sathish Jarkiholi, have been evincing interest in reviving their party's truck with the JD(S). There were also indications that the Congress and the JD(S) might field a joint candidate for the Rajya Sabha seat from the state for which the BJP has fielded K C Ramamurthy.

After JD(S) supremo, H D Deve Gowda, said recently that he would like to wait for signals from Sonia Gandhi after the announcement of bypoll result, the Congress leaders took an initiative on these lines. Former union minister, M Veerappa Moily, speaking at Mysuru on Sunday, December 1, spoke about the possibility of such an alliance. Before him, the other top leaders of the Congress had spoken about such a scenario after December 9, on which bypoll result would be out.

H D Kumaraswamy said that the BJP will lose its majority after the bypoll and this will pave way for political polarization. He was speaking at Gokak on Sunday, where he also spoke of making party candidate, Ashok Pujari, a minister after the election.

The chief minister, B S Yediyurappa, termed this talk as an effort by the parties to divert the attention and confuse the voters. He asserted at Belagavi that he will be the chief minister for the balance 42 months term. He said that the Congress and the JD(S() had joined hands in the past with the sole purpose of blocking BJP from forming the government. He said that he became chief minister again, as the leaders of these two parties fought with each other. He said that the dream of these parties to come to power will never be realized.

At the same time, speaking at Bengaluru, Deve Gowda said that his party will never join hands with the Congress. He also said that his party will not support efforts to destabilize the BJP government. He said he is aware of numerous ways in which the Congress leaders had tortured Kumarswamy when he was the chief minister. He got angry when questioned about the possibility of his party aligning with the Congress for Rajya Sabha election.

Speaking at Hubballi, former Karnataka chief minister, Jagadish Shettar, dismissed the talk of an alliance between the JD(S) and the Congress as the height of madness.