P G R Sindhia Made Karnataka JD(S) Working President
From Our Special Correspondent
Daijiworld Media Network

Bangalore, Jan 20: Former minister P G R Sindhia, who recently rejoined the Janata Dal (Secular) ending his long self-imposed political isolation, has been appointed as the working president of Karnataka unit of the party.

JD(S) supreme and former prime minister H D Deve Gowda made the announcement regarding Sindhia’s appointment at a news conference at the party office in Bangalore on Wednesday.

Sindhia, who entered politics after doing his apprenticeship in the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), has steadily climbed up the ladder after joining the Janata Party in the post-emergency era. He had worked as minister under former chief ministers Ramakrishna Hegde, J H Patel, S R Bommai, H D Deve Gowda and Dharam Singh.

However, Sindhia had quit the party when Deve Gowda’s son H D Kumaraswamy led his faction to withdraw support to the Dharam Singh-led Congress-JD(S) coalition regime. He declined to contest in the 2008 assembly polls, though he had joined the Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party and was appointed its national General Secretary. Mayawati, however, sacked Sindhia when the BSP failed to win any seats or make an impact in the 2008 assembly polls.

Sindhia had supported some candidates belonging to Congress and JD(S) in the 2009 lok sabha polls and also the state assembly byelections. He had recently rejoined JD(S) as there were no other viable alternative options in the state.

Deve Gowda delayed the release of the list of new office bearers, waiting for Kumaraswamy’s arrival from New Delhi. When it became clear that Kumaraswamy could not join the press conference as his flight from New Delhi was inordinately delayed due to fog, the JD(S) supreme merely announced Sindhia’s appointment as the state party unit’s working president and withheld the names of all other office-bearers.

The JD(S) national president made it clear that his party would fight the ensuing BBMP polls on February 21 on its own without any alliance with the Congress party. The party would be organizing a massive convention of partymen in the city next month, he said.