Former Chief Minister and Leader of Opposition in the Legislative Assembly Siddaramaiah on Monday expressed confidence that both the candidates of the Congress will romp home in the ensuing polls to Rajya Sabha with the party having 25 additional votes besides hoping of getting the second preference votes in its favor.
“We are hopeful that the JD(S)’ votes will also come in our favor since our second candidate belongs to the minorities. I cannot say how many votes will come in our candidates’ favor but we are strongly hoping to get ‘conscience votes’ from other parties,” he claimed.
Speaking to reporters here, Mr. Siddaramaiah, who was here to campaign for the party candidate contesting to the Council polls from South Graduates’ constituency, asked former CM H.D. Kumaraswamy to get his party candidate withdraw from the RS poll fray and support the Congress candidate if he wanted to defeat the BJP.
‘A SECULAR PARTY’
“Ours is a secular party as we did not put a candidate against the former Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda when he fought the RS polls. We did not put the candidate as we wanted Mr. Gowda to win the poll and the BJP lose the election. Despite the JD(S) having 37 MLAs, we supported Mr. Kumaraswamy to become the Chief Minister as we wanted to keep the BJP out of power. Mr. Gowda would not have become the Prime Minister if the Congress had not supported him,” Mr. Siddaramaiah said.
When asked about Mr. C.M. Ibrahim, who has joined the JD(S), the former CM said Mr. Ibrahim lacks a say in the party despite being the president of JD(S) and he was not made the MLC as promised after joining the JD-S.
Withdraw revised textbooks
Lashing out at the Bommai Government over the controversy surrounding the textbook revision, he said that the lessons on Kuvempu, Basavanna, Narayanaguru and Bhagat Singh have been withdrawn from the textbooks after the revision.
“Are they not Hindus? Have they written anything against the Hindus? I don’t know whom the BJP calls the Hindus and whom they call non-Hindus. Am I not a Hindu?” he questioned.
Mr. Siddaramaiah demanded that the revised textbooks must be withdrawn and the textbooks revised by writer Baragur Ramachandrappa committee must be continued since Mr. Rohit Chakratheertha has allegedly disrespected poets-writers, freedom fighters in the name of revision of textbooks. The revised textbooks must be dropped immediately, he demanded.
