In a repeat performance, former Prime Minister and JD-S chief H D Deve Gowda dumped his party's second coalition partner BJP, a shock treatment he meted out to the Congress 20 months ago.Gowda's outfit, which came up with a tally of 58 seats in the 2004 Assembly elections which threw up a fractured verdict, made most out of the unstable political situation, enjoying power for 40 months, in two spells with the Congress and BJP.The former Prime Minister kept his options open and chose to go with the Congress citing his secular credentials.But later accusing the Congress of trying to split his party, Gowda dumped it after sharing power with it for 20 months and prompted his son H D Kumarswamy to align with the BJP, which he had branded as communal, to form the second coalition dispensation.There is a similarity in the political developments that brought down the Congress-led coalition government in 2006 and now the JD(S)-BJP government.In 2006, Gowda promised Sonia Gandhi to save the Congress-JD(S) coalition government after Kumaraswamy staged a political coup and the Congress had deployed A K Antony for defusing the crisis but the mission ended in failure.Now BJP deputed its senior leader Yashwant Sinha on a fire-fighting mission to save the coalition but Gowda saw to it that the power was not transferred to it.
