Two former ministers blame Siddaramaiah for the fall of the JD(S)-Congress government in Karnataka in 2019

Bengaluru, May 17 (PTI) Two ministers in the outgoing BJP government on Wednesday accused senior Congress leader Siddaramaiah of defecting a group of his party legislators that led to the collapse of the HD Kumaraswamy-led coalition government in 2019. Stayed in power for 14 months. K Sudhakar and ST Somashekar, who were health and cooperation ministers respectively in the Basavaraj Bommai government, raised the issue at a time when Siddaramaiah is in a tough competition with state Congress president DK Shivakumar to become the chief minister after the Congress wins the assembly. Sudhakar and Somashekhar were in the Congress earlier, winning 135 seats. He was among the 17 Congress-JD(S) MLAs who defected to the BJP, leading to the fall of the coalition government and paving the way for the BJP to come to power.

“During the JDS-Congress coalition government in 2018, whenever the MLAs (Congress) went to the then coordination committee chairman Siddaramaiah with their concerns, he used to express his helplessness and say that the government and their constituencies/districts He himself has no say in the actions of the Supreme Court,” Sudhakar claimed.

Moreover, Siddaramaiah used to assure the MLAs to wait till the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and that he would not allow the then coalition government to continue even a single day after the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, come what may.

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Ultimately, some MLAs, including him, had to compulsorily leave the Congress and go back to the people in the by-elections, in order to protect ‘karyakartas’ and supporters in their constituencies, he said, and asked “is Mr. Siddaramaiah aware of this fact?” Can deny that he had no role, implicitly or explicitly, in this move by the Congress MLAs?”

Somashekar said, despite being the chairman of the coordination committee, Siddaramaiah always expressed his helplessness in addressing the concerns of the legislators during the Congress-JDS coalition government. “No one can deny the fact that it prompted some of us to quit the party and go for the bypolls,” he said.

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Sudhakar and Somashekhar, after switching to the BJP, contested the bypolls on the party’s ticket and won, and also became ministers in the government. Sudhakar had lost the Chikkaballapura seat in the May 10 assembly elections, while Somashekar had won from Bangalore’s Yeshwanthpur seat.