Deve Gowda targets ‘Siddaramaiah Congress’

Deve Gowda targets ‘Siddaramaiah Congress’

Belagavi: JD(S) supremo H D Deve Gowda has accused Chief Minister Siddaramaiah of “reducing” the Congress party to his “fiefdom” and said senior leaders of the party were being “silenced”.

Minus Siddaramaiah, there is no voice of the Congress party. It’s become ‘Siddaramaiah Congress’.

Nobody cares for senior leaders, he told journalists here on Saturday.

Gowda refused to comment on income tax raids on Energy Minister D K Shivakumar and suggested that both the Congress and the BJP refrained from attacking each other as they had a “secret” understanding.

Siddaramaiah hasn’t spoken against BJP state president B S Yeddyurappa or the “failures” of the Central government. The BJP, in turn, is not speaking against the state government. “Both the national parties want to destroy the JD(S), but we are ready to take on them,” he said.

Gowda said Prime Minister Narendra Modi should provide interim relief to Karnataka in the Mahadayi water-sharing dispute so that drinking water is supplied to the parched towns of North Karnataka.

“I took up the issue with Modi but he chose to remain silent. As the prime minister, I had provided an interim award to the state in the Cauvery dispute in 1996, despite running a 13-party coalition government.

The Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal gave the final award only in 2007,” he said and urged the prime minister to hold talks with the chief ministers concerned.