BENGALURU: Bengaluru District in-charge Minister Ramalinga Reddy on Monday confirmed that JD(S) MLAs Akhanda Srinivas Murthy, K Gopalaiah and B Z Zameer Ahmed Khan had held talks with Congress MLAs Munirathna Naidu, Byrathi Basavaraj and S T Somashekhar on the JD(S)-Congress tie-up.
“The leaders met me last week and expressed their desire to keep communal forces at bay. I asked them to take their leaders like H D Deve Gowda and H D Kumaraswamy’s consent on this,” he said. However, he said more clarity is needed from both sides.
BJP leader S Suresh Kumar said Chief Minister Siddaramaiah was meddling with BBMP affairs and accused the Congress of playing dirty politics. “The top leaders who are close confidants of the chief minister are the one trying to form this nexus to keep the BJP at bay,” he said.
Meanwhile, a Congress leader asked the BJP to do some soul searching before making such accusations. Saying it was D V Sadananda Gowda who had first met Deve Gowda, he brought up the BJP-JD(S) nexus of 2006.