DMK's views do not represent opinion of southern states, says Kumaraswamy

New Delhi: Union Steel Minister and Janata Dal (S) leader H D Kumaraswamy said on Friday that the DMK’s arguments against bills to tweak the women-quota law represent its own opinion and do not reflect the position of the southern states.

During a discussion on the bills in the Lok Sabha, Kumaraswamy, who has been the chief minister of Karnataka twice, termed the DMK’s arguments “fear mongering”, and said they do not represent the views of the southern states.  

The JD (S) leader also said Andhra Pradesh under N Chandrababu Naidu as an example where political parties from Southern States have supported the bills. 

The DMK, which is in power in Tamil Nadu, has been vehemently opposing the bills and have raised concerns that they would adversely impact the southern states.

He took a jibe at Congress as well saying the party is not prepared to handle the massive change and that its has lost touch with people and does not know how to cope with this transformation.

“The Congress, which has lost the capacity to think independently, lost its ability to develop its own arguments is now being led by the DMK’s narrative,” he alleged. 

Kumaraswamy also said Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, who he claimed does not understand the head or tail of caste-based reservation, had argued at one point of time that reservation should be proportional to the size of the caste population, but alleged that he does not want to extend the same argument to Parliamentary representation.

“Rahul Gandhi called himself the younger brother of (Tamil Nadu Chief Minister) M K Stalin sometime back but it appears that after the seat-sharing dispute, the elder brother is angry with the younger brother. The younger brother is still looking for some love from the older brother…,” he said.

The JD(S) leader was making an apparent reference to the differences between the Congress and the DMK on seat-sharing for the upcoming Tamil Nadu Assembly polls.

Kumaraswamy also said that  the idea of 33 per cent reservation for women was first proposed in 1995 by former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda when he was Chief Minister of Karnataka. Though Deve Gowda later introduced the proposal in Parliament in 1996, it could not be passed at the time due to lack of political support, Kumaraswamy said.