Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said his party would win a "thumping majority"
A day before the Karnataka election results, the Congress denied reaching out to HD Kumaraswamy's party, amid reports that it may play a big role in the event of a hung assembly.
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said his party would win a “thumping majority” and that it would decide its moves based on the numbers tomorrow,
“The numbers will tell us what to do,” Mr Kharge told NDTV, questioned on the possibility of an “Operation Lotus” – the term used by the opposition to describe what they allege is the BJP strategy of gaining power by inducing MLAs to switch sides. “We will take a call after the results,” he said.
The Congress chief denied that he is in talks with the JDS after a leader claimed the party had decided whom to tie up with. “Nobody. We are reaching out to nobody,” Mr Kharge asserted.
Many exit polls have predicted a majority for the Congress in the polls that took place on Wednesday. However, a fractured verdict has not been ruled out, which leads to the possibility of the JDS playing kingmaker. In 2018, the BJP emerged as the single-largest party but fell short of a majority. The Congress and JDS formed a coalition government, which crashed 14 months later after mass defections to the BJP.
On Thursday, a JDS leader claimed that the party had received feelers from both the Congress and the BJP and that a decision had been taken, which set off fierce speculation about a BJP-JDS tie-up.
The comment came from Tanveer Ahmed, not former chief minister Mr Kumaraswamy, who was in Singapore. "The decision is done. It's taken. We will announce it to the public when it is the right time to," Mr Ahmed had said.
However, Karnataka JDS chief CM Ibrahim disowned Mr Ahmed's statement today, saying “he is not our spokesperson”.
Congress leaders say they are confident of winning around 150 seats in the 224-member assembly in which 113 is the majority mark.
Karnataka Congress chief DK Shivakumar said earlier today that the Congress would form a government on its own and that he did not want to comment on the BJP cozying up to the JD-S.
"No talks between the JD-S and BJP. We will form the government on our own. Let them talk. I don't want to comment on their talk," he said.