The Janata Dal (Secular)‘s [JD(S)] State unit on Sunday scrambled to shrug off the “discomfiting political stigma” of its national leadership throwing in its lot with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Karnataka even as the party’s Kerala unit holds a Cabinet portfolio under the Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)]-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) government.
Embarrassingly for the JD(S) State unit, the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) had sought to politically exploit JD(S) national president Deve Gowda’s recent assertion that his alliance with the BJP had the tacit approval of Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan.