Bengaluru: A bitter war of words between his son and former chief minister H D Kumaraswamy and Congress legislature party (CLP) leader, Siddaramaiah, notwithstanding, JD (S) patriarch H D Deve Gowda seems keen to carry on with a tacit understanding with the Congress for forthcoming bypolls to fill 15 vacancies in the Legislative Assembly as part of his strategy to defeat the ruling BJP.
Mr Gowda, who arrived in New Delhi on Wednesday morning, is likely to reach out to senior Congress leaders on the need for unstated pre-poll adjustment between the two parties with his party likely to field candidates in five constituencies, and offer a friendly fight in the remaining ten seats in north Karnataka. Such an arrangement would help the erstwhile coalition partners defeat disqualified legislators, who in all probability, would be fielded by the ruling party, and unseat Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa, according to sources in state unit of JD (S).
Sources said for the record, Mr Gowda has maintained that his party would contest these bypolls on its own rather than repeat the unsuccessful experiment of contesting Lok Sabha polls as coalition partner of Congress.
Mr Gowda's move comes a day after Mr Kumaraswamy and Mr Siddaramaiah were locked in an online war of words with the JD (S) leader blaming the latter for collapse of the coalition government. Mr Siddaramaiah retorted saying the former chief minister had resorted to drama ahead of the bypolls scheduled for October 21.
Meanwhile, sources in Congress said Mr Siddaramiah and his camp followers are determined to stop party leaders in Delhi from forging an alliance with JD (S).
