While the Congress has ferried its MLAs to a resort in Bengaluru to ensure that they aren’t poached by the BJP, the JD(S) on the other hand doesn’t have any such plans.
Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy himself has reiterated that there was “no need” for him to shift his party MLAs to any resort, as they were all “united”.
This despite four to five of his MLAs being approached by the BJP. According to party sources, the BJP is said to be in touch with MLAs including D C Gowrishankar (Tumakuru Rural), B Sathyanarayana (Sira), Raja Venkatappa Nayak (Manvi), Devanand Chavan (Nagthan), K Srinivasa Murthy (Nelamangala) and R Manjunath (Dasarahalli).
Some of the JD(S) leaders, including ministers, that DH spoke to, said that the BJP had offered a huge sum of money (Rs 60 crore and more) to the MLAs, in the hope that it can topple the government.
Interestingly, despite being aware of the BJP’s tactics, Kumaraswamy doesn’t seem to perturbed. He had instead extended an invitation to all of his 37 party MLAs and 14 MLCs to be part of the launch of the trailer of his son Nikhil Kumar’s film, ‘Seetharama Kalyana’.
On cue, a majority of the legislators made their way to Mysuru, where the teaser was launched on Saturday.
After the trailer launch, Kumaraswamy hosted dinner meeting for party legislators at a resort on T Narsipura Road. Though the party sources claimed that the MLAs would not be held in the resort, however they spent the Saturday night in the resort. On January 15 too, the day that the BJP had planned to execute its Sankranti coup, Kumaraswamy had taken time off to go watch the trailer of another of Nikhil’s film, ‘Kurukshetra’ at MLA and producer Munirathna’s residence, unmindful of the political storm brewing in the state. Kumaraswamy, before plunging into active politics was a film producer and a distributor. He has on more than one occasion claimed that films were his first love.
Nikhil, made his debut with ‘Jaguar’, a Kannada and Telugu bilingual. While Kurukshetra is still under production, Seetharama Kalyana will soon be hitting the screens.
The action film has been produced by his mother Anitha Kumaraswamy, under their home banner Channambika Films.
