The JD(S) has launched a full-frontal attack on Congress Legislature Party (CLP) leader Siddaramaiah for the downfall of the previous coalition government headed by H D Kumaraswamy. 

JD(S) patriarch H D Deve Gowda has attributed the government’s collapse to Siddaramaiah, his protege-turned-rival. Kumaraswamy, too, has said he was not allowed to work freely by Siddaramaiah, who headed the Congress-JD(S) coalition coordination committee. 

Gowda has said that Siddaramaiah had friction with Kumaraswamy from the beginning. “Siddaramaiah, who was the chief minister for five years, was not taken into confidence by Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi who decided upfront that Kumaraswamy will be the chief minister. That did not go down well,” Gowda told reporters Thursday. 

Gowda also said that Siddaramaiah’s close friends had said that the former CM was not keen on the coalition government’s longevity. 

After the Congress-JD(S) coalition government collapsed, Siddaramaiah had found himself under immense pressure because his ‘loyalists’ were in no mood to listen to him. 

There has been talk in the political circles that Siddaramaiah may have helped, directly or indirectly, the crisis to deepen. Among the MLAs who resigned, leading to the government’s fall, include S T Somashekhar, B A Basavaraj (Byrathi), Munirathna, K Sudhakar and MTB Nagaraj, who are considered Siddaramaiah loyalists. Two of them - Basavaraj and Nagaraj - belong to the backward Kuruba community like Siddaramaiah. 

But last month, Siddaramaiah dismissed talks that he had a role to play in the fall of the Kumaraswamy-led government. “Media houses are reporting that few rebel MLAs have claimed that I instigated them to resign and destabilise our government. This is nothing but a false allegation with malafide intention,” Siddaramaiah had tweeted.