BENGALURU: With the Bengaluru Rural Lok Sabha constituency gearing up for a close contest between the two national parties, and Deputy Chief Minister and KPCC president DK Shivakumar going all out to ensure victory for his younger brother and sitting MP DK Suresh, scores of JDS workers from Channapatna joined the Congress on Thursday night. Shivakumar claimed that over 10,000 BJP and JDS workers have joined the Grand Old Party in the last one month.
However, the JDS mocked at Shivakumar, terming his induction of workers into the GOP as a “gimmick”, claiming that the workers were those already with the Congress. “The Congressmen, especially the duplicate CM @DKShivakumar, are so afraid of defeat that young Congress workers are being given the Congress shawl, they are being portrayed as JDS workers. This is living proof that fear of failure and despair can get one to resort to gimmicking,” the JDS posted on X.
But the Congress claimed that Shivakumar felicitated Ramanagara Youth Congress leader Sachin, who brought his father Akkurudoddi Shivanna, who was with HD Kumaraswamy, to the Congress fold.
“How can Kumaraswamy and Deve Gowda field their family member Dr CN Manjunath from the BJP, in order to build the JDS? The JDS has reached this state as a result of Deve Gowda handing the party reins to Kumaraswamy,” he said.
He said that in Channapatna, the BJP and JDS workers cannot reconcile, given the rivalry between Kumaraswamy and former minister CP Yogeshwara. “If we get one vote more than the BJP in Channapatna, Yogeshwara will be a casualty (politically) at the hands of Kumaraswamy,” he said.
He attacked Kumaraswamy, claiming that he had not given even a small amount of power to his party workers, when he was the CM, which proved counterproductive for the party. “Politics is not new to the people of Channapatna. But if you look at the politics of today, you don’t understand who to trust and who not to,” he remarked.