Preetham Gowda of the BJP has made a veiled threat to voters of “one community” for not voting for him in the just-concluded Karnataka elections in which he lost his Hassan Assembly seat to the Janata Dal Secular.
In a video clip that has been widely circulated on social media, Gowda is heard saying: “We will show them who we are.”
He had courted controversy in December 2022 by warning Muslim voters in his constituency that he would “ditch” them if they “ditched” him in the Assembly polls.
In the election, Preetham lost to Swaroop Prakash of the JDS by 7,854 votes in a hotly contested battle in the Vokkaliga-dominated constituency.
In an undated video clip, Preetham is seen telling his supporters from a terrace, standing next to a BJP flag: “How much work we did in the past five years? While others slept during Covid, those who worked are here. The people wouldn’t have forgotten.”
“But what the people from one community showed us, in the coming days we will show them who we are,” he said, apparently alluding to the minority community that is believed to have voted for the JDS.
“Truth will shine over Hassan the way the sun and moon does. I’ll show what my power is,” Preetham added, to loud cheers from his supporters.
Preetham had won the Hassan seat in the 2018 Assembly polls defeating JDS veteran and four-time MLA H.S. Prakash, Swaroop’s father.
While Muslims had this time consolidated generally in favour of the Congress over the fear of the JDS opting to align with the BJP in the event of a hung Assembly, the community seemed to have opted for tactical voting in Hassan since Swaroop had a better chance of defeating Preetham.
This is evident from the abysmal show by Congress candidate Banavase Rangaswamy, who polled a mere 4,305 votes (2.52 per cent), while Swaroop bagged 85,176 votes (49.8 per cent) and Preetham 77,322 (45.21 per cent).
Parameshwara wish
Senior Congress leader G. Parameshwara on Tuesday said he had conveyed his willingness to be the Karnataka chief minister to the party high command, which continued its efforts to choose between P.C. Siddaramaiah and D.K. Shivakumar.
A former deputy chief minister who had led the party to an absolute majority in the 2013 state polls, Parameshwara told reporters that he would not reject any such offer but said he wouldn’t lobby for the top job.
