Krishna could have waited for Karnataka poll results: Congress

Team Udayavani, Mar 24, 2017, 10:38 AM IST

New Delhi: The Congress today said internal efforts are on in the party to reorganise and strengthen it and former Union Minister S M Krishna could have waited for the results to come out in Karnataka elections later this year as in Punjab.

Congress spokesperson Rajeev Gowda also accused the BJP of poaching its leaders with clean image ahead of Karnataka polls to provide a camouflage for their real antecedents. He, however, said people of the state will not be fooled and the BJP will meet a sorry outcome in the upcoming elections.

“If he had waited for little more time, he would have experienced that there is lot of internal effort that is going on for reorganising the party, revitalising the party.

“Karnataka would have been wonderful example of how we are going to not just reorganise and strengthen the party but also deliver results which will change the momentum just like Punjab had delivered a vote of confidence in Congress party across country,” he said

Gowda said Karnataka and other states coming up for polls will deliver the same vote of confidence and “Krishna should have been a little more patient, he would have seen the impact of these changes and we could have used his advice and experience as well”.

He said he has been following Krishna’s political career and the Congress party had given him everything except three positions of President, Vice President and Prime Minister. “May be there is a possibility that these are positions on offer. There are some elections coming up. We do not know, only he and the BJP leadership know what induced him to take this particular decision,” he said.

“In Karnataka, the BJP is desperately looking for fig leaf; who are their leaders? Their leaders are jailbirds and people who have a tremendously horrible reputation in front of the people of Karnataka – Shri Yeddyuruppa has been to jail, Shri Janardan Reddy has come out of jail and who else?

“The BJP before these elections has no face of its own. So they are reaching out to clean Congress people with the hope that it will provide them some kind of a camouflage for their real antecedents and their true track record. But people of Karnataka will not be fooled and the BJP will meet sorry outcome in the upcoming elections,” he said.

Krishna, a former Union External Affairs Minister during UPA, joined the BJP yesterday in the presence of BJP chief Amit Shah and hit out at Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi saying politics is serious business and not a “hit-and-run job”.

The 84-year-old former external affairs minister also alleged that there is a disconnect between the Congress leadership and the rank and file of the party and that there is no leader in the party who could match Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

To a question on the constitution of National Commission for Backward Classes, Gowda said “this has just come up and so we will discuss and study the details internally and then make a formal response”.

“We need to understand the contours of what this constitutional body entails,” he said.

On the issue of seeking any legal remedy in the matter of undermining the constitutional regulatory institutions, Gowda said the party will examine but essentially this is something that not just the party but many activist groups are taking up.