In the light of questions being raised on the longevity of an alliance forged in Karnataka ahead of the 2024 Parliament polls by the Opposition Janata Dal (Secular) and the BJP—especially after the two parties recently chose to protest separately on issues like the Dharmasthala secret burials controversy—former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda has clarified that the partnership will endure up to the next Assembly polls in 2028.
“The JDS-BJP alliance was formed for the Lok Sabha elections. This alliance will continue unabated for the next elections as well. The alliance will not be affected by any election. No one needs to worry about this,” Gowda said on Friday at a briefing.
“The alliance will continue for the panchayat and Assembly elections as well. My relationship with Prime Minister Narendra Modi will never change. Our relationship is good. Show me an occasion in the last 10 years when I have spoken lightly about him,” Gowda said.
Gowda, 92, also set a 48-hour deadline on Friday for the Congress government in Karnataka to provide comprehensive information about the relief to be provided to flood-affected districts in the northern part of the state. Gowda said he would visit flood-affected areas in four to five days “to see what kind of relief this government has provided”.
“I will go by road wherever possible and meet the affected people. I will see the problems they are facing first-hand and get information from them. I will get details about the damage done and find out whether the state government has come to their aid accordingly. I will then prepare a report and submit it to PM Modi,” Gowda said.
“The state’s financial condition has deteriorated due to the five guarantees’ scheme. The government does not have the resources to deal with the flood situation,” Gowda alleged.
A JD(S) women’s convention will be organised on October 12 with 50,000-60,000 women participating as part of efforts to reorganise the party at the grassroots, he added.
Scripting a comeback
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Ahead of the Lok Sabha elections last year, the JD(S), which won only 19 seats in the state polls in 2023, allied with the BJP, which won 66 seats, in an effort to counter the Congress, which won 135 seats. The alliance partners won 19 of the 28 Lok Sabha seats in Karnataka compared to the 2019 polls, when the BJP alone won 26 seats.
Considered down and out after the 2023 Karnataka Assembly polls, where its vote share plummeted from 18 per cent to 13 per cent as the Congress grabbed the majority of seats in the traditional JD(S) stronghold of south Karnataka, the JD(S) made a comeback in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls on the back of an alliance with the BJP.
Despite a pre-poll controversy surrounding its Hassan candidate and Deve Gowda’s grandson Prajwal Revanna over alleged incidents of sexual assault on women, the JD(S) made gains as a regional party in Karnataka within a span of a year of its massive loss in the Assembly polls.
The strategic decision to join the BJP-led NDA alliance, after being rejected by the Congress for the INDIA alliance, paid dividends for the JD(S) and re-established the credentials of Gowda and his son H D Kumaraswamy as the foremost leaders of the dominant Vokkaliga community in south Karnataka.
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Realising that it was losing ground to the Congress in a three-way fight in the region with the BJP, the JD(S) forged an alliance with the BJP ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections on the basis of a good relationship between PM Modi and Gowda.
Following the formation of the NDA government in 2024 with the JD(S) as an ally, Gowda’s son, H D Kumaraswamy, was given a key ministerial portfolio in the Modi government in the form of the heavy industries ministry.
Minor irritants
There have, however, been minor irritants in the JD(S)-BJP alliance since the parties came together last year, suggesting internal pressures for the former to retain its independent identity in southern Karnataka and not be seen as a part of the BJP.
In August last year, the JD(S) had initially shown reluctance to participate in a protest march from Bengaluru to Mysuru with the BJP over alleged irregularities in land allotments by the Mysore Urban Development Authority, where Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah’s family was also initially accused by an RTI activist in a private complaint.
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The JD(S) and the BJP, however, put up a united front in the end after the latter agreed to share the centre stage with the regional party’s young leader and Kumaraswamy’s son, Nikhil.
There were doubts about the alliance again in recent weeks when both parties took out separate protests to Dharmasthala while alleging a witch hunt against temple administrators on the basis of unsubstantiated allegations of secret burials in the temple town between the years 1995 to 2014.