Bengaluru: Hitting out at his erstwhile partners, JD(S) leader and former chief minister H D Kumaraswamy on Saturday, said that he would have remained the CM if he had allied with the BJP instead of the Congress.
Blaming Opposition leader and former CM Siddaramaiah for ruining his reputation with the people, HDK said that over a period of 12 years he lost all the goodwill that he had earned in 2006-2007 due to their alliance with the Congress.
“When I stepped down as the chief minister due to a power struggle with the BJP in 2006, I still had a following and the support of the people. After allying with the Congress in 2018, Siddaramaiah and his gang destroyed my reputation. I walked into their trap only because I agreed to the alliance because of Deve Gowda,” HD Kumaraswamy said, as per a report by India Today.
Speaking further, the JD(S) leader said that he did not ally with the BJP as he did not want to hurt his father, H D Deve Gowda, the JD(S) supremo who continues to stick to his secular beliefs.
He also credited his public 2018 breaking down into tears to the alleged torture he had to endure, he said that he shed tears a month into becoming the Chief Minister because he “knew what all was going on”. “The BJP did not hurt me that way the Congress has to my reputation,” he added, reports India Today.
Kumaraswamy’s statements come amidst speculation that an alliance between the JD(S) and BJP has been budding over the past few months. HDK and incumbent CM B S Yediyurappa have met several times over these months, but they have downplayed these meetings as just constituency-related development projects.
