Siddaramaiah rocks Cong-JD(S) boat in yet another video

Former chief minister Siddaramaiah stirred the political cauldron once again through a video that surfaced on Tuesday, in which he is heard expressing doubt on the Congress-JD(S) coalition completing a full five-year tenure.

In the video that was aired on news channels, Siddaramaiah is seen conversing with unidentified persons who are not visible. One of them opines that the government may not last five years to which Siddaramaiah responds thus: “Hmmm...five years? Let’s see what happens after the Parliamentary elections. They’ll be there until the Parliamentary elections. But who knows what developments will happen after the Parliamentary elections.”

Siddaramaiah’s seemingly private opinion, which supposedly was expressed at Dharmasthala where he is camping for health treatment, contradicts the Congress’ repeated assurance that the coalition would complete five years in power with Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy at the helm. Siddaramaiah is the leader of the Congress Legislature Party. In an earlier video that was aired, Siddaramaiah was heard expressing disapproval of Kumaraswamy’s plan to present a full-fledged budget.

Irked by Siddaramaiah’s back-to-back brickbats, an upset Kumaraswamy is learnt to have poured his heart out with Deputy Chief Minister G Parameshwara and Water Resources Minister D K Shivakumar - both members of the Coalition Coordination and Monitoring Committee - that such comments dented the government’s image and made his job difficult. Sources also said that Kumaraswamy reached out to the Congress high command, which assured him that he had its backing and advised him to focus on governance.

Siddaramaiah is also heard predicting the outcome of the Lok Sabha elections. “Whatever (Prime Minister) Modi does, he won’t win. All Opposition parties are uniting.”

The conversation then moves to allegations that electronic voting machines (EVMs) were tampered with in the recent Assembly polls. One of the persons in the video suggests EVMs were rigged, which led to the defeat of Mohiuddin Bawa and B Ramanath Rai, who were favourites to win. “How did BJP get votes in places where Muslims and Christians were large in number,” Siddaramaiah asks.