Joint contest

Buoyed by the victory in the bypolls, Karnataka Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy and Congress state president Dinesh Gundu Rao yesterday asserted that they would contest the 2019 Lok Sabha elections together against the BJP.

The two leaders gave credit for the electoral success to the policies of the Congress-JD (S) coalition, which bagged two Lok Sabha seats and two assembly segments in the by-elections held on Saturday.

“We will contest the 2019 Lok Sabha elections together. We will sit together to chalk out strategies to fight the Lok Sabha election in a coordinated manner,” Kumaraswamy said.

Rao charged the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) with forgetting its duty as a responsible opposition. “They set aside ethics and morality due to which they faced defeat at four places,” Rao said.