JD(S) to contest all 40 seats in Goa, no truck with Cong-BJP

Panaji, Apr 7 (UNI) Janata Dal(Secular) will contest all the 40 seats in the coming elections to the Goa Legislative Assembly if alliance with like-minded regional parties fail but it will not join hands with either Congress or the BJP, party president and former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda today said.

Disclosing this to media persons after addressing party workers, Mr Deve Gowda said the local party unit would explore possibilities for having an electoral understanding with regional and like-minded parties before April 22 and later take final decison to contest the number of seats.

If the talks fail, it would not hesistate to contest all the 40 seats in the elections scheduled to be held before June 11 this year as ''we are keen to build our party at the national level,'' Mr Deve Gowda said.

''Even as coalition partners of Congress and the BJP in Karnataka, our party contested different elections in different states on our own without any truck with these national parties and we continued to do so,'' the former Prime Minister said.

As far as Karnataka was concerned, the coalition partners had to stick to the Karnataka Development Programme with good governance and nothing else. That was the understanding, he added.

''We never surrendered to either Congress or the BJP as coalition partners,'' he said.

To a question, Mr Deve Gowda said he would give preference to young blood in seat allocation as the youth had to take charge of the nation in due course.

The party manifesto, to be released two weeks before the elections, would highlight all the problems the people of Goa had been facing as a result of their negligence by the current government.

''We want that the glory of Goa be kept in tact and all issues including the controversial Mahdei river water sharing issue, be resolved amicably between Goa and Karnataka,'' he added.

The party was also in favour of contesting the May 5 Panchayat polls on non-party basis.

UNI