Setting her party on a combative mode against the Janata Dal (Secular)-Bharatiya Janata Party ministry in Karnataka, Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Sunday attacked it as an "opportunistic alliance for power" and asked party workers to expose the new combine and bring the state out of the "political confusion".
On her first visit to Bangalaore after the new ruling combine came to power in February 2006, Sonia particularly targetted the JD(S) which brought down its coalition government with the Congress and joined hands with the BJP to make Karnataka the first state in the south to be ruled by the saffron party.
Addressing a massive convention in Bangalore where the All India Progressive Janata Dal leader Siddaramaiah formally merged his party with Congress, she said, "Some might have gained power by this. But people of Karnataka have not been benefitted" by this government.
"Our workers should expose this. We have to bring Karnataka out of this confusion," she told thousands of her partymen in what was billed as an impressive show of strength by both Congress and AIPJD.
In an indirect reference to the strains dogging JD(S) and BJP following the Rs 150 crore mining bribery charges made against Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy by a BJP legislator, Sonia quipped, "Some people of a party are now pointing their fingers at the government."
Asking the Congress workers to fight against the new political ideology of JD(S) and BJP, she attacked JD(S), avoiding the name of its supremo H D Deve Gowda, for "accidentally" pulling out of the Congress-led coalition government "giving a go by to secular ideology and political dharma for the sake of power."
