Rebels blame Congress for Karnataka political crisis

One of the disqualified Karnataka lawmakers on Monday blamed Congress leaders for working to bring down their coalition government in the state.

“They asked us to be patient till the [April-May] Lok Sabha elections. They said the coalition would end after the polls,” said S T Somashekhar.

Somashekhar is one of the 16 lawmakers whose resignations led to the collapse of the Congress-Janata Dal (Secular) alliance government last week.

Karnataka speaker K R Ramesh Kumar on Sunday disqualified 14 of the rebel lawmakers. He had earlier on July 25 disqualified three lawmakers, including an Independent.

Somashekhar said that no senior Congress leader bothered to address their grievances against chief minister H D Kumaraswamy-led coalition government.

He said the coalition suffered from a bad public image because of Kumaraswamy’s attempt to hold on to power. “We will counter everything said about us in the assembly. Their agenda was different,” he said while referring to criticism the rebels faced from the coalition leaders.

Somashekhar said that the rebels will not join the Bharatiya Janata Party. “Except for some, most of the Congress leaders wanted to bring down the coalition as they felt it would damage the party,” he said. He added he would quit electoral politics but would contest his disqualification.

Former deputy chief minister and Congress leader G Parameshwara dismissed Somashekhar’s claims as baseless. “They [rebels] are yet to give a convincing reason for their resignations,” he said.

“They received a lot of money for works in their constituencies when Siddaramaiah was the chief minister and this continued even under the coalition rule. So what was their grievance?”