From Our Special Correspondent
Daijiworld Media Network

Bengaluru, Jun 22: Terming the BJP-JDS alliance for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls as the ‘most natural’ among two like-mined parties, Union Heavy Industries and Steel Minister H D Kumaraswamy said the alliance will continue in future too.

Addressing a function to felicitate the newly appointed Union Ministers from the State and the new MPs from BJP-JDS in Bengaluru on Saturday, the JDS leader confessed that he was “keen on BJP-JDS alliance for the 2018 but it could not happen.”

“I don’t want to discuss all the happenings and bitter experiences of the past. It is time to bury the past bitter incidents and move ahead,” he said.

The JDS leader warmly praised the senior BJP leader B S Yediyurappa and described him as a never tiring stalwart despite his old age of 82.

The Union Minister said the JDS and BJP must go together and fight all future elections in the State with mutual understanding. “There should not be any rift among the two parties and even if somebody tries to spoil the ties, we should not bother about such things and work unitedly in a spirit of give and take,” he said.

Kumaraswamy criticised the Congress government’s guarantees as the main reason for the price rise in the state and alleged that Chief Minister Siddaramaiah is struggling to raise revenues to fund the guarantees.

The JDS leader said the people of Karnataka came to know about Kumaraswamy because of the BJP-JDS alliance in 2006 and recalled that Yediyurappa had extended full cooperation and support to him. But the transfer of power after the agreed 20-month period did not happen due to the evil designs of some persons, he said and claimed that Congress would have faced extinction in the State if the alliance had continued.

Union Ministers Prahlad Joshi, Shobha Karandlaje and V Somanna along with Yediyurappa and other MPs from the two parties attended the programme.