Taunting the tenuous alliance between the Congress and the JD(S) in Karnataka, the BJP said the new partners should set their MLAs free to return to their constituencies.
“The people of the state will then force them to break their alliance,” BJP chief Amit Shah said.
The new government in Karnataka will take oath on May 23. The MLAs of both alliance partners are still lodged in five-star hotels to ensure that they are not poached by the saffron party. Going by the BJP's aggressive style of functioning, the new JD(S)-Congress government will always be under pressure.
On a day the JD(S) leaders visited Delhi to meet Congress patron Sonia Gandhi, and chief Rahul Gandhi, Amit Shah termed their alliance “unholy” and added that the mandate of the state was for the saffron party.
Addressing his first press conference at BJP headquarters after the Karnataka fiasco, Amit Shah hinted that the BJP was still open to the idea of forming its government in Karnataka because of the inherent contradictions in the Congress-JD(S) alliance. “We will see when that happens,” he said in response to a question if the BJP would form a government if an when cracks appear in the new alliance.
Amit Shah justified BJP staking claim to form the government even when they were short of seven MLAs saying, “The mandate was for the BJP. Our vote share and tally has improved vastly. Earlier, we got 40 seats, now we got 104 seats. If no one has a clear majority, so does that mean we go for another election? If we had not gone for government formation, the people of the Karnataka would have questioned us. We had to honour their mandate.”
The BJP chief claimed that his party was targeted with false allegations of horse-trading. “It's the Congress that sold its entire stable (to JD(S)),” Shah said. Amit Shah termed the audio recordings released by Congress as “fake”.
As the new alliance is being hailed in the Congress camp as a victory, the BJP chief questioned their raison d'être for celebrations. “What is the Congress celebrating. They lost 50 seats. Many Congress ministers lost, even the CM lost from one seat, and managed to win from another by a thin margin. Results show people have voted for anyone who could defeat Congress...Even the JD(S) candidates lost their deposits in 80 per cent seats,” Amit Shah argued.
He rubbished talk of opposition unity saying all these leaders who are coming together were against the BJP even during the 2014 elections. “What new has happened. Barring TDP, all were against us. All these will have limited appeal, and BJP will again win handsomely in the next elections,” Amit Shah said.