Congress already had a plan B for the polls

Team Udayavani, May 16, 2018, 2:42 PM IST

New Delhi/Bengaluru: With respect to the final decision of the Congress to extend its spport to the JD(S) to form a coalition government, Congress sources say that the party had had a plan B kept ready, in order to prevent the BJP from forming the government. The decision was taken by Congress President Rahul Gandhi and his mother former Congress President Sonia Gandhi on Tuesday afternoon. By that time, it was evident that the Congress cannot form a government on its own, but had won enough seats to defeat the BJP by joining the JD(S) camp.

After the decision was made, Rahul Gandhi requested senior party leader Ghulam Nabi Azad to speak to JD(S) head honcho Deve Gowda about the proposal. The communication chief of the party Randeep Singh Surjewala also declared the decision of the party in public. But the offer of a tie-up began last Sunday itself, when Azad contacted JD(S) National Secretary Danish Ali to discuss it.

Though an internal party survey predicted that the Congress might win over 120 seats, the party had taken all precautions to make sure that the BJP does not come to power. Unlike the BJP, the Congress had sent its senior leaders like Azad and former Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot to Bengaluru to carry out negotiations. They had kept their offer out in the open, since they knew that Deve Gowda was averse to siding with the BJP.

The strategy was that the Governor would follow the same example set during the Goa and Manipur Assembly elections last year and the Meghalaya Assembly elections this March. In these States, the Governors had chosen a “stable post-poll alliance” instead of bringing the single largest party in the polls to power. Surjewala had earlier said that inviting a post-poll alliance was the “settled principle” since the Supreme Court had also upheld it, in case of the Goa elections. When asked about what the party would do if the congress-JD(S) claim is rejected by the Governor, Surjewala said that he expected the Governor to act according to the letter of the Law. However, he said that the party will be open to all options.