Date:01/02/2007 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2007/02/01/stories/2007020112350400.htm

Karnataka - Bangalore

B.R. Patil's poser to Deve Gowda

Staff Reporter

`He has to explain why suspension of only 38 MLAs was revoked'

BANGALORE: The suspended Janata Dal (Secular) legislator B.R. Patil has said that party president H.D. Deve Gowda has a moral and political responsibility to "explain" why he preferred to revoke the suspension only 38 MLAs, who have identified with Chief Minister H. D. Kumaraswamy, and not the seven others suspended earlier.

He told presspersons here on Wednesday that Mr. Gowda's stand on the issue was "unjustifiable."

All the seven suspended MLAs would fight against Mr. Gowda's attitude towards them both on the floor of the Assembly and outside, he added.

At its plenary session on May 16, 2004, the party adopted a resolution to the effect "... it should not compromise with its secular outlook, a basic ideological stance of the party. For that reason only, it should not seek support from the BJP nor form the coalition government with it." Contrary to the resolution, Mr. Gowda joined hands with the BJP.

Mr. Gowda's reported defence of joining hands with communal forces had only exposed his "double standards" and his "deceptive politics," Mr. Patil said.

Mr. Gowda had deliberately kept away important persons from the plenary session of the party held recently in Bangalore. There, he emphasised on reunification of the Janata Dal factions, forgetting that "he has been the destroyer of Janata family since 1984," Mr. Patil alleged.

Mr. Gowda had termed the JD (S)-BJP equation in the Government as only a "power sharing arrangement." By stating so, he had reduced the very edifice of the Government to a "mere corporate business body believing only in sharing profits," he charged.