BENGALURU: The Congress-JDS coalition government in Karnataka, which had raised hopes of formation of a grand alliance to take on the Modi-Shah juggernaut ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, lost the trust vote on Monday paving the way for the formation of a BJP government in the state.
Thanks to internal bickering within the Congress and lack of coordination among top leaders from both the parties, the coalition never really took off.
While Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy seems to have made efforts to take charge of governance and implement schemes like the farm loan waiver, his government never looked stable, on the contrary, hopping from one crisis to another.
“It was more of a struggle for survival than governance,” political analyst Prof Harish Ramaswamy told TNIE on Tuesday.
“It was a successful government as far as addressing problems of the farmers was concerned ... but for many reasons the alliance did not work at all,” he said.
After 2018 Assembly polls, the parties had joined hands to keep BJP — which had emerged as the single largest party with 104 members in the 225-member-house— away from power.
However, right from the beginning, there was always disagreement between the parties — from portfolio allocations to seat-sharing during 2019 LS polls.
So much so, even after 14 months, they did not even come out with a Common Minimum Programme.
“There was always a disagreement, and not having a CMP was a mistake. It was a coalition just to keep the BJP away from power and that intent did not favour them at all,” says Ramaswamy.
The role of the coordination committee headed by former CM Siddaramaiah, which was expected to ensure proper coordination between the two parties, came under fire.
State presidents of Congress and JDS were not even members of the committee which was expected to coordinate between the parties and the government. In fact, former JDS state president-turned-party rebel
H Vishwanath had on several occasions stated that the committee had failed to do its work. Even many senior Congress leaders were of the same view.
The debacle in the 2019 LS polls was the final nail in the coffin.
Congress ended up winning just one seat.
Contradictions within the coalition also resulted in former PM and JDS supremo HD Deve Gowda losing from Tumkur. JDS too won just one seat.
The BJP that was hoping to win around 20 seats, actually ended up winning a record high of 25 out of 28 Lok Sabha seats in the state and the coalition partners working at cross-purposes was said to be one of the factors that helped the saffron party in the polls.