Will Not Tolerate If JDS Cadres Are Hurt: Deve Gowda

Former Prime Minister and JDS supremo HD Deve Gowda on Saturday took umbrage at the government closing down a stone crushing unit run by a party worker, despite it having a licence and warned the ruling BJP that he would not tolerate it if cadres were affected.

The JDS has charged Municipal Administration Minister K C Narayana Gowda of pursuing vendetta politics despite the fact that the unit was operating legally.

Narayana Gowda could not be reached for his comment. Deve Gowda said he will not speak in a derorgatory manner against Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa because he has assured him that as opposition leader, his party would not trouble him for the rest of his term

However, he would not tolerate if his party workers were targeted, Gowda said.

“If at all a worker is hurt, I will become obstinate and not bother about my health and my nature,” he said addressing a gathering at KR Pet, where the unit is located.

He said he had also told Yediyurappa and his adviser about it.

The JDS supremo said in his 50 years of politics, he had resigned as irrigation minister thrice and been expelled from his party, but that had neither detered or scared him.

“I have struggled a lot. I was thrown out of the party, but I was not scared. I have struggled throughout my life to protect my workers,” Gowda said.

Mandya district, in which K R Pet is located, dominated by Vokkaligas, to which community Deve Gowda belongs to and was for long a JDS citadel.

However the May 2019 Lok Sabha elections and the December 5 byelections saw a change of fortunes for the party.

A BJP backed independent, multilingual film actress Sumalatha Ambareesh, won the LS election, defeating Gowdas grandson and former chief minister H D Kumaraswamys son Nikhil Kumaraswamy. The bypolls saw K C Narayana Gowda, who had defected from JD(S) to the BJP, emerge triumphant.