Dissolve the Karnataka assembly to avoid horse trading: Congress

New Delhi, Oct 29 (UNI) Expressing apprehension over imminent horse trading in Karnataka, the Congress Party today called upon the Centre and the Governor to dissolve the state assembly forthwith and allow the state to hold election.

''It is ironical that those who are relying on horse trading to avoid elections are accusing us of horse trading,'' AICC Spokesman Abishek Manu Singhvi told newspersons, while describing the move of the Janata Dal (Secular) and the BJP to again form a government as ''political opportunism and hypocrisy.'' He said the central government could have dissolved the assembly and called for election when all the political parties, including the JD(S), BJP and the Congress, felt after the resignation of Chief Minister Kumaraswamy that only an election could lead to a workable governmental majority.

But the Centre, in deference move to the spirit of Bommai and the Bihar judgements than to their letter, did not dissolve the assembly and put it in suspended animation, instead.

On the move to form a BJP-JD(S) coalition government, he asked why were the BJP and the JD(S) afraid of facing the electorate. ''Is it because they know in advance of the thumping rejection awaiting them? And therefore they are trying to camouflage this real fear in the shroud of principle?'' Questioning the secular credentials of the JD(S), Dr Singhvi said the (S) in the name of the party was ''the biggest insult to secularism ever invented by mankind.'' ''They know neither the spirit nor the form, nor the spelling of secularism,'' he said.

In this context, he said former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda and his son H D Kumaraswamy and the JD(S) developed amnesia and start remembering secularism when the time for power sharing came.

Dr Singhvi said Mr Gowda wrote a letter to the President with copies to the Prime Minister and to the Governor, a few days ago graphically detaching the grave apprehensions of horse trading, and supporting election as the only way out of the impasse and ruling out any combination as possessing a workable majority.

Within a few days, Mr Gowda and his son did a volte face.

He said both the JD(S) and the BJP spent crores of rupees to take out full page advertisement abusing each other after the withdrawal of BJP support to Chief Minister Kumaraswamy and his subsequent resignation.

''Whether it is BJP or JD(S), their only consistency is in their continued inconsistency,'' Dr Singhvi alleged.

But the Congress Party, he said, was concerned about the huge and irreversible prejudicial impact of all these unholy antics upon the state. ''One of India's most prosperous state has been afflicted by paralysis.'' UNI