The Congress will be contesting the next Assembly elections in Karnataka, which is less than 10 months away, on the plank of “Kannadiga pride” against the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) effort to indirectly impose Hindi on the State, former Chief Minister and Leader of the Opposition in the Karnataka Assembly Siddaramaiah said.
Mr. Siddaramaiah was in Delhi to meet former Congress president Rahul Gandhi. He had a luncheon meeting on Tuesday, along with his colleague and State Congress president D. K. Shivakumar. Both are contenders for the Chief Minister’s chair and have a long history of power struggle. The meeting was called to arrive at a working relation before the upcoming elections.
“There are no differences between me and Mr. Shivakumar. The meeting was only to deliberate upon our strategy ahead for the Assembly elections. A united Congress will fight the polls,” Mr. Siddaramaiah insisted.
Mr. Siddaramaiah argued that the BJP government in the State is driven by Delhi and is seeking to indirectly impose Hindi and Hindutva on Karnataka. The former Chief Minister asserted that if the Congress was to return to power in the State, there will be domicile-based reservation in Class III and IV government jobs for Kannadigas.
To drive this campaign, the Congress is planning to resurrect the 1984 Sarojini Mahishi report, which recommends a certain percentage of jobs to Kannadigas in public sector undertakings, private companies and multinational companies. The BJP, too, has been making noises on implementing the report, tweaking it to suit the present realities. No concrete step have been taken in this direction.
“The BJP government at the Centre and the State are taking away the jobs of Kannadigas. What did Prime Minister Narendra Modi do? He merged four Karnataka-based banks — State Bank of Mysore, Syndicate Bank, Vijaya Bank and Corporation Bank to steal jobs from Kannadigas,” Mr. Siddaramaiah said.
The party, he said, will also table the caste-based census that was carried out during his tenure but since then has been put on a back-burner.
He blamed the BJP for stirring the communal cauldron, raising unnecessary debates around “ hijab, halal and azaan” in the State to distract voters from the party’s failures. The State’s fiscal health is precarious and is running on loans, he added. He said, “The BJP was forced to dial back the communal rhetoric because the voters are not buying it. Karnataka cannot be divided on these lines.”
A section in the party led by Mr. Siddaramaiah feels that the Congress should not tread gingerly around issues concerning minority rights, and that the Congress should be heard and seen defending Muslims. While Mr. Siddaramaiah did not say so explicitly, he insisted that the Congress will stand for Constitutional rights for everyone. “We will fight for the Constitutional rights of Muslims. This is not for appeasement or electoral benefit. It is because the Congress is firmly committed towards secularism and an inclusive society,” he added. He accused the BJP of trying to consolidate the Backward and Dalit communities on the basis of Hindu-Muslim polarisation.
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Speaking on the recent divorce between erstwhile Karnataka allies, the Congress and Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S), Mr. Siddaramaiah contended that it had not been driven by his party. The JD(S) had reneged on its promise to support the Congress candidate, responding to a similar gesture by Congress during the last round of elections for the Upper House, when the Congress had supported former Chief Minister H. D. Deve Gowda’s candidature. “Now, they are unnecessarily spinning tales about it,” he said.
The Rajya Sabha elections were only an excuse as the alliance that was formed ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections broke because it did not bring electoral benefit to either.
