Deve Gowda 'Father of dissidence', chides Vishwanath

Congress MP H Vishwanath, a strong critic of former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda chided the latter as ‘Father of dissidence’ with examples; since 1960 he has been troubling the Chief Ministers sprouting dissident activities, starting from S Nijalingappa, Veerendra Patil, S R Bommai, Ramakrishna Hegde, N Dharam Singh. In the case of Bommai, Gowda toppled the then government. Though he played a key role in Janata Dal (Secular) forming the government in alliance with Congress, anointing Dharam Singh as Chief Minister, he didn’t spare him when it came to haunting with his vicious activities. Even when he was the Prime Minister, he had tried to dent Congress party’s image. Eventually, he had to pay for it by losing the coveted post.

Now, when BJP led State Government was on the verge of losing power on its own owing to internal bickerings, he did administer glucose to them to survive, with his party’s efforts to unseat the government boomeranged, helping BJP again. It was the same party that made the State see first ever communal party rise to the seat of power, Vishwanath alleged.

Making a reference of these, Vishwanath warned some section of Congress leaders hobnobbing with Deve Gowda not to fall prey for his foxy politics. On the allegation made by Deve Gowda against Congress party having a tacit understanding with BJP to check JD(S), in a recent press meet, Vishwanath shrugged off saying ‘do not attach any significance to it’. Congress is much older than BJP which was earlier known by ‘Jan Sangh’ and there is no question of joining hands only to divide secular votes, as alleged by Gowda, Vishwanath said.

Defending Congress party as most decent and will never indulge in such activities, Vishwanath asked Deve Gowda ‘Did Congress high command ask you to topple the government in the State’? At the same time, Vishwanath said ‘if Congress MLAs want to make exit under the name of ‘Operation Kamala’, let them do so, nothing can be done.