The Congress believes that if anyone outside the party’s leading family gets a chance to rule, they should be “pushed to desperation”, Union minister Arun Jaitley said on Monday. Jaitley claimed the Congress was doing to Karnataka Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy what it had done to other former prime ministers who ruled with support from the Congress.
Jaitley’s remarks came in a Facebook post two days after Kumaraswamy said he was “not happy” being the chief minister in a coalition government. Kumaraswamy, of the Janata Dal (Secular), leads a coalition government in Karnataka in which the Congress is the dominant partner.
“The Congress firmly believes that only members of one family can rule India,” Jaitley said on Monday. “If anybody else gets a chance, he should be pushed to the desperation of throwing his hands up and weeping publicly.”
Jaitley called the alliance in Karnataka a “non-ideological opportunistic” one just to “keep Modi out”. Survival, not service of the nation, is the only object of such an alliance, he said. Such coalitions always get trapped within their own contradictions, he said.
Hinting at the Opposition parties’ plan to forge a coalition to counter the Bharatiya Janata Party in the 2019 General Elections, Jaitley wrote: “[The prime minister of India] cannot be seen like the chief minister of Karnataka as a tragedy king. If such a coalition is a cup of poison, why even dream of inflicting it on the nation? The leader of the world’s fastest growing economy cannot be a ‘Bechara’ [helpless].”
On Saturday, Kumaraswamy, who was in tears, had said he had to work with the Congress, fend off the Opposition BJP, and satisfy the aspirations of his own party. “If the pressure gets to me, I’ll have no hesitation in resigning in less than a couple of hours,” he had said.
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