JD(S) chief H D Deve Gowda on Wednesday accused Congress maintaining a facade of secular democrats.
While justifying his party’s alliance with the BJP for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, he accused the Congress of trying to destroy secular forces across the country.
He said the pact with the BJP, which was announced last week, does not mean that the JD(S) is deviating from secular ideals.
“Even if we form a government with the BJP, we will not let go of minority protection. There should be no doubt that we will protect the minorities,” he said during a presser.
“I will give you hundreds of instances, (where) for your own political gain, to retain the politics in one family, political control by one family, you want to fool (people),” he said.
He accused Congress of trying to destroy the JD(S) whenever it formed an alliance with the national party.
Gowda alluded to the role of senior Congress leaders in Karnataka in the collapse of the JD(S)-Congress coalition government in 2019.
JD(S) leaders, in the past, have pinned blame on Siddaramaiah alleging that he asked his loyalists to defect to the BJP to bring down the coalition government under H D Kumaraswamy.
“Who was responsible for the formation of the BJP government here? Doesn’t the Congress central leadership know this?” he asked.
He added Congress had failed to back B M Farooq (currently MLC) when the JD(S) nominated him as a candidate for Rajya Sabha.
“Who got him defeated? They are all big leaders. I don’t want to take their name. This is the (status of) secular party,” Gowda said.
“Congress has committed, one after other, blunder after blunder and wants to talk about secular democracy,” he said.
He said alliance was “not opportunistic politics”.
“The pain to save the regional party I worked for 40 years. There is no greed in this. It is I who made the decision,” he said.
