Mysuru: Days after JD(S) supremo H D Deve Gowda met former CM Siddaramaiah and KPCC chief Dinesh Gundurao and held a joint press conference to send out a message to the party leaders and workers, the activists of the coalition parties on Friday closed ranks and joined the JD(S) show at Hassan.However, the neighbouring Mandya district is still in a political turmoil as differences between the leaders of the two parties continue to simmer despite the intervention of senior Congress leaders. As the grand old party is unable to quell the rebellion at Mandya, which is crucial for chief minister HD Kumaraswamy as he is seeking to make it his son Nikhil Kumaraswamy’s karmabhoomi, it has angered the JD(S) leaders.The rally to mark JD(S) general secretary Prajwal Revanna’s entry to politics at Hassan saw leaders of Congress share dais with the JD(S) brass led by Gowda and the CM. This comes a day after the intervention of Siddaramaiah, who directed the local Congress leaders to fall in line and extend support to Prajwal. Former minister A Manju’s move to join the BJP and the visit of public works minister H D Revanna to Congress leaders’ houses has pushed the warring party leaders join hands to take on the saffron party. In the past year’s assembly polls, BJP won Hassan seat and lost at Sakleshpur by a margin of 4,942 votes to JD(S).The JD(S) leaders ensured that Congress leaders get their due during the rally and while filing the nomination papers—Congress MLC Gopalswamy was one of the four leaders who was present. Revanna managed the show during the two hours rally and invited Congress leaders to address the crowd well before the JD(S) leaders. When Congress leaders extended Prajwal scarf with their party symbol displayed prominently on it, Revanna ensured that his son had it on till the end of the event.Though some local Congress leaders didn’t attend either the roadshow or the rally, which left some JD(S) leaders angry, including the CM. Kumaraswamy admitted there are small differences between the coalition party workers in Hassan but there is no need to panic. “I know which medicine to give to sort out the differences,” Kumaraswamy said. Kumarswamy asserted that both Congress and JD(S) have to stick to coalition dharma and work together to keep BJP away from power.But there is resistance to it at Vokkaliga heartland Mandya even though Vokkaliga strongman and senior Congress leader DK Shivakumar intervened. Shivakumar, who is the irrigation minister, has been unable to stem to rebellion of Congressmen as some of its leaders attended the joint press conference at Mandya while other local Congress leaders held a separate meeting and held talks about supporting Indepdendent Sumalatha. Though it was to send out a message of unity, it proved counter-productive with many senior Congress leaders including N Chaluvarayaswamy and Ramesh Bandisiddegowda staying away.This comes amid senior JD(S) minister S R Mahesh’s demand to Congress leadership that it should issue a diktat to its party MLAs that they will be held responsible in case the coalition candidate fares poorly in their respective seats. The JD(S) supremo has issued such a diktat, which should be emulated by the Congress, he told reporters in Mysuru after meeting the probable Congress candidate for Mysuru Lok Sabha segment C H Vijayashankar. “We will follow the coalition dharma and ensure that coalition candidate get lead in the segments represented by the JD(S). We expect the same from Congress,” he stated.

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