‘Decision to align very hard; Cong leaders fought like warriors’

BENGALURU: DK Shivakumar, the Congress’s troubleshooter-in-chief in Karnataka, has endeared himself to the party even more over the past week by ensuring that the party’s MLAS stuck together and did not defect. In an interview, Shivakumar tells

that the party must now respect the sentiments of its workers in the Old Mysuru region and how hard it has been for them to accept the Congress-jd(s) alliance. Edited excerpts:

Gopal Vikram

It wasn’t just me. But, everybody cannot do everything. Political management… not everybody can do that. With my 35 years of experience, I won the seventh consecutive elections, I have some experience in speaking to MLAS and d knowing their problems and keeping them united. raid because that is over, but a lot of trouble may arise... From the beginning I have been saying that he is a Congressman. I know personally, and I was also responsible for bringing him to the Congress (from the Bharatiya Janata Party). Even when he was in the BJP, we were friends...friends But I spokspoke to and he sent a messa age (on aturday) and we we ere ble to keep the floc ck together... our nummbers ere very add, espeially in the Vokkaliga belt. I had warned my party leaders also that this was about to happen and that we should be very cautious. But we were also overconfident. It is a very, very hard decision, because our workers have fought like great warriors in Ramanagara, Channapatna, Mandya, Mysuru and Hassan. In all these places, they have fought hard, but now we are trying to sail together, and that has hurt a lot of them, including my family. A lot of cases were booked against my family under Kumaraswmy’s government. But, in the national interest, our personal interests cannot come to the fore. So my ego also has to be kept away in the national interest and the party’s interests... The time is not ripe now. There was a time when (such a decision) would have changed the political scene of Karnataka, but that has gone now.