I did what I could have done, says Siddaramaiah on his defeat

Bengaluru: Outgoing chief minister Siddaramaiah turned emotional at the maiden meeting of newly elected Congress party legislators on Wednesday while speaking on the party's humiliating debacle in the assembly polls even as a section of senior leaders obliquely held him responsible for the disastrous result.

Besides this, a section of MLAs also expressed displeasure over the attempts to form an alliance with the JD(S), but Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Ghulam Nabi Azad immediately intervened and clarified that the Congress party was compelled to forge an alliance to keep Opposition unity intact for the 2019 general elections in mind.

Speaking to Deccan Chronicle, a senior leader said, "Mr Siddaramaiah was slammed by several senior party MLAs, who obliquely stated that he was solely responsible for the defeat of the party as his decision to contest in two seats and overplaying the AHINDA card resulted in the defeat. After hearing them patiently, Mr Siddaramaiah turned emotional and asserted that he did what he could have done. "I felt all the while that I was doing the right thing. Actually, my government has not performed badly. Three months before the polls, I undertook extensive rallies just feel the pulse of the people. Nowhere  did I witness anti-incumbency. Had it come to my notice, I would have surely acted upon it to dissipate it as much as I could," he said.

He further argued that the unprecedented consolidation of upper-castes had resulted in the party's debacle rather than anti-incumbency as some of the Congress were suggesting.

As soon as a section of legislators started expressing their displeasure over the alliance with the JD(S), AICC general secretary and leader of the opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Ghulam Nabi Azad intervened and asserted that the  Congress party's central leaders were compelled by several other like-minded opposition parties to give a fresh chance to this alliance. "We know we have had a bitter experience but 

we need to put this behind and move ahead. We need to fight the kind of politics launched by Prime Minister, Narendra Modi and BJP national president Amit Shah in the country. With raids everywhere none is safe, we need to tell them that they can't succeed and we mustn't allow them to succeed," he reportedly told the agitated legislators.