Bharatiya Janata Party national general secretary Ananth Kumar on Monday said the Siddaramaiah government may not be able to survive if the Congress gets fewer seats than the BJP in the State in the Lok Sabha elections.
The countdown for the fall of the Siddaramaiah government too had begun along with that of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government at the Centre, he said.
“Congress leaders, including Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and Mr. Siddaramaiah, are disturbed as there is reluctance among its prominent leaders to contest the elections,” Mr. Kumar said at a ‘Meet-the-Press’ programme jointly organised by the Press Club of Bangalore and Bangalore Reporters’ Guild here.
He alleged that Congress leaders in the State, including Mr. Siddaramaiah, did not have the courage to face the harsh truth that people were disgusted with the UPA government and were yearning for a change. Hence, they were making an attempt to turn these national elections into municipal polls by trying to make “roads and drains as poll issues”.
Claiming that he had taken the initiative to unify splinter groups of the BJP by bringing back leaders who had deserted the party, Mr. Kumar said the party had regained its ground in Karnataka in the last one year and would get the highest number of seats in the State. He said the Congress would get less than 100 seats at the national level.
On his position in Bangalore South where Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani is taking on him as the Congress candidate, Mr. Kumar said Mr. Nilekani was embarrassed to use the Congress symbol and pictures of the party leaders as he did not want to carry the baggage of the “Congress misrule”. “But he (Mr. Nilekani) inherits the problems of the Congress as people look at him as a Congress candidate,” he said.
