The BJP and JDS have allayed fears that their alliance is on the verge of breakdown following the sex scandal involving Prajwal Revanna and his father H.D. Revanna and its impact on the elections to the Karnataka Legislative Council from teachers’ and graduates’ constituencies.

There was speculation about the cadres of the two parties not being ready to work unitedly in the three constituencies where the alliance partners have fielded joint candidates. Eligible graduates and teachers in these constituencies will vote on June 3.

Former chief minister H.D. Kumaraswamy of the JDS and leader of the Opposition R. Ashoka of the BJP were among the leaders who renewed their unity mantra by rubbishing talks about the sex scandal creating a rift between the alliance partners.

Ashoka even called upon BJP workers to ferry eligible voters to the polling booths on June 3 to ensure they win the maximum number of seats to help maintain their slender majority in the Legislative Council.

“Since there aren’t too many polling booths, our party workers should ferry the voters to the booths (since they could be far from the voters’ homes),” he told a BJP-JDS coordination committee meeting on Sunday.

Ashoka said the alliance was here to stay and could have defeated the Congress in last year’s state elections had they joined hands. “Had the BJP and JDS forged an alliance before the 2023 Assembly elections the Congress would have never come to power,”
he said.

Kumaraswamy appealed to workers of both parties not to believe speculation about the JDS secretly supporting an Independent candidate. He warned of legal action if any candidate other than the official BJP-JDS nominees is found using pictures of either himself or his father and former Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda to seek votes.

“I am fully aware that pamphlets of a candidate claim support from me and my father. This is totally false and I want our party workers to
ignore such claims. We will take legal action against misuse of our photographs,” he told the meeting.

The JDS’s Bengaluru city unit president, Ramesh Gowda, had earlier alleged that Independent candidate Puttaswamy was using pictures of Kumaraswamy and his father to lure voters.