BANGALORE: A day after personal attack on JD(S) supremo HD Deve Gowda, KPCC chief G Parameshwara expressed regret over his comments.
“I didn’t mean that Gowda should take poison and die. I just made that statement very casually. A sort of sarcasm,” Parameshwara told reporters here after releasing Kannada version of the party’s manifesto.
Parameshwara on Wednesday stoked a controversy by taunting Gowda that the JD(S) chief as promised should consume poison because his party did not win the assembly elections. “Just nine months back, the senior Gowda had said JD(S) will come to power in Karnataka on our own. Gowda had said that if they don’t come to power, he will consume poison and die. I am also waiting that he will take it today or tomorrow. He is not consuming it,” the Congress had said.
Regretting his remarks, Parameshwara said that Gowda was a very senior politician in the country and was former Prime Minister. “We do need him in politics. I wish and pray that he lives more than hundred years. Let him live happy and healthy life,” he said.
“This was kind of small aberration; I don’t think one should take this kind of thing so seriously,” the KPCC Chief said. “Otherwise any politician if he makes a statement, if one takes it so seriously…I think then there is no politics,” he said.
Mocking at Gowda at a roadshow here to drum up support for his party Lok Sabha candidates, Parameshwara, known as a sober leader, also said on Wednesday, “He is now saying this is his last election (from Hassan Lok Sabha constituency). He is saying this in Hassan, crying.”
Speaking more derisively about Gowda, he said the JDS chief had also said that he would like to be reborn as a Muslim in his bid to woo the voters from that community.
“Who wants the next birth. We do not know whether there is rebirth or not. Let him convert in this birth only…We will create a platform for it tomorrow itself…” he said.
Furious at Parameshwara’s remarks, Gowda reacted saying “I will consume poison? What nonsense. He has been given Hassan charge, what non-sense. It does not befit the President of Congress in the state,” he said.
Gowda’s son and former chief minister H D Kumaraswamy slammed Parameshwara’s remarks, saying it showed his “perverted mindset and he wished ill for Gowda”
“I do not know when Gowda had said he would take poison. His (Parameshwara’s remarks) only show the culture of his party,” Kumaraswamy said.
