The Janata Dal (Secular) held its national plenary under the shadow of a growing confrontation between the BJP-led state government and Governor HR Bharadwaj. The speech of the party?s national president, HD Deve Gowda, elected to the post for the fourth time, reflected the JD(S)?s search for relevance. ?Why should the people trust us?? he asked, rhetorically. ?What have we done except protest on the streets??
His prescription was the coming together of the non-BJP, non-Congress parties on a common minimum programme. Significantly, he has also called on the RJD?s Lalu Prasad Yadav and the Samajwadi Party (SP) to throw in their lot with their old socialist friends.
Lalu Prasad and Gowda had fallen out when the latter was prime minister and had recommended the prosecution of Prasad in the fodder scam case. ?The fodder scam is nothing compared to the corruption in Karnataka today,? he said. LK Advani was talking of black money being stashed in Swiss banks while condoning the state government?s corruption in Karnataka, he said.
He didn?t spare the Congress either. ?I want to know why the central government allowed a second trust vote in Karnataka when 117 MLAs of the JD(S) and the Congress had presented themselves to the governor recommending the dismissal of the Yeddyurappa government,? he said.
It was a sombre crowd which listened to him, and one of the amendments introduced in the party?s constitution reflected just how under siege its members felt by the BJP?s much-touted ?Operation Kamala?? that is, the outright buying off of anyone who provided any credible threat. The party introduced the concept of a whip at even the zila panchayat level, the absence of which had seen eight members of the JD(S) in Mandya taluk walk into the BJP after being elected last year.
The party which has seen the slide of its vote share in the state is fighting with its back to the wall. It thinks it can get back in the reckoning by appealing for a larger national consolidation against the two national parties and putting the state government on the mat on the issue of corruption.
A special resolution on fighting corruption in Karnataka was also moved in the plenary by Gowda?s daughter-in-law, Anita Kumaraswamy.