Bengaluru: Janata Dal (Secular) national president HD Deve Gowda categorically ruled out the possibility of forming any alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Tuesday, putting an end to weeks of speculation regarding a potential tie-up in the upcoming 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
“There is no question of allying with anybody. We will fight independently and on our own,” Gowda told reporters in Bengaluru Tuesday. The former Prime Minister added that the JD(S) will contest on as many seats as it possibly can in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.
Gowda’s statement comes at a time when his own son, former chief minister HD Kumaraswamy, has been dropping hints of a possible alliance between the JD(S) and the BJP.
While there have also been rumours about a possible merger of the regional party with the BJP, senior JD(S) leaders have dismissed these claims.
Kumaraswamy has sided with the BJP in Karnataka over the last two weeks to corner the Siddaramaiah-led Congress government over issues like corruption and the behaviour of the Speaker during the budget session of the state legislature.
The two parties have been trying to join forces to keep the Congress in check in the lower house, or legislative assembly. In the upper house, or legislative council, the BJP and JD(S) have the numbers to control the passage of bills.
The 10 May assembly elections left the JD(S) with 19 seats in the 224-seat lower house, while the Congress emerged victorious in 135 constituencies. The BJP could only secure 66 seats and lost power.
Since the elections, the infighting in the BJP has intensified and the central leadership has refocused its energies to other poll-bound states such as Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.
The BJP was forced to sit with an empty seat reserved for the Leader of the Opposition for the entire duration of the budget session. This did not escape the notice of the Congress, which has poked fun at the BJP over the delay.
“For all practical purposes, Kumaraswamy of the JD(S) is the BJP’s leader of the opposition,” said a Congress legislator, requesting not to be named.
However, some analysts believe that ties forged by the JD(S) tend to not go very deep.
“The JD(S) style is one of allying with one rhetorically but fighting separately. That’s what they did with the Congress for many years. Now they are doing it with the BJP,” said Narendar Pani, political analyst and faculty member at the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), speaking to ThePrint.
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Who gains what in a JD(S)-BJP alliance?
The JD(S) received the biggest drubbing in this year’s assembly elections, winning just 19 seats as against 37 in 2018, and losing nearly 6 per cent of its vote share to the Congress.
Most of these votes were lost in the Old Mysuru region of southern Karnataka, where the JD(S) has traditionally drawn most of its strength. The JD(S) now fears further erosion of its support base in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
Political analysts point out that the JD(S) and BJP have shared a good working relationship, providing assistance to each other in areas where only one of them stands a chance against the Congress. Facing an existential crisis, the JD(S) aligned itself with the BJP to regain some ground and avoid slipping further into political oblivion in Karnataka.
The Congress and JD(S), on the other hand, share a turbulent relationship. The two parties formed an alliance after the 2018 assembly elections to prevent the BJP from coming to power. In the following year’s national elections, the JD(S) and Congress extended their state-level alliance, but they were dealt a blow as they were reduced to just one seat each, while the BJP bagged 25 out of the total 28 seats in the state.
The JD(S) holds a unique position as the only party to ally with both the BJP and Congress in Karnataka, earning them the monikers of “kingmaker” and “opportunistic”.
In 2006, for instance, Kumaraswamy broke away from an alliance with the Congress and joined hands with the BJP, allowing the latter its first opportunity to govern Karnataka.
Even at that time, Gowda had disapproved of the alliance formed by Kumaraswamy and the father-son duo have since maintained that it was a mistake.
Analysts say that the JD(S) stands to benefit more from any possible tie up with the BJP even though the latter stands to gain too in terms of making inroads in the old Mysuru region.
Requesting anonymity, one analyst speculated that the BJP might be thinking of the JD(S) as useful for the short-term goal, until the 2024 elections, but then may “discard” it.
As of now, the JD(S) has not overtly expressed any interest or intent to join the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) or the Congress-led I-N-D-I-A (Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance), which currently has the support of 26 parties.
(Edited by Asavari Singh)
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