Maintaining Secularism While Destroying Country’s Secular Forces: Congress Chief JD(S) H D Deve Gowda

JD(S) leader H D Deve Gowda charged Congress on Wednesday of upholding a veneer of secular democrats.

He defended his party’s coalition with the BJP ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections by charging that the Congress was attempting to weaken secular groups all throughout the nation.

He asserted that the JD(S) is not departing from secular ideas as a result of the agreement with the BJP, which was revealed last week.

“We won’t give up on protecting minorities, even if we join forces with the BJP to create a government. There should be no question that we would defend the minority groups, he declared during a news conference.

“I will give you hundreds of examples, (where) you want to fool (people) for your own political gain, to keep politics in one family, to have political control by one family,” he stated.

He said that anytime the JD(S) made an alliance with the national party, Congress sought to destroy it.

Gowda made a suggestion that top Congress figures in Karnataka were responsible for the JD(S)-Congress coalition government’s dissolution in 2019.

In the past, JD(S) leaders have blamed Siddaramaiah, claiming that he ordered his supporters to join the BJP in order to topple the coalition government led by H D Kumaraswamy.

“Who was in charge of setting up the BJP administration in our country? He questioned, “Doesn’t the top leadership of the Congress know this?

He noted that when the JD(S) nominated B M Farooq (now an MLC) as a candidate for the Rajya Sabha, Congress had declined to support him.

“Who beat him? They’re all formidable leaders. I’m not interested in using their name. This is the secular party’s standing, according to Gowda.

He said, “Congress has made mistake after mistake and wants to speak about secular democracy.

His statement that an alliance was “not opportunistic politics”

“The suffering I went through to rescue the local party I worked for 40 years. This is not done out of avarice. I am the one who decided,” he said.