Ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, JD(S) today named office bearers for its Karnataka unit, including former minister Iqbal Ansari as the party’s working president.
The appointments came five months after former chief minister H D Kumaraswamy, son of party supremo H D Devegowda, was anointed as the state unit president.
“The coming elections are a litmus test for my party. We have the challenge to prove that the JD(S) is growing as an alternative to the Congress and BJP in Karnataka,” Kumaraswamy told reporters here. Party MP C Narayanaswamy, who is replaced by Ansari, has been appointed chairman, political affairs committee, former police officer Abdul Azim has been made the head of the poll manifesto drafting committee and Y S V Datta retained as spokesman.
Hitting out at BJP leader M Venkaiah Naidu, who yesterday termed the proposed “Third Front” as “third rate front”, Kumaraswamy said, “A Grade party leaders have been knocking at the doors of several other parties to come to power.
“It was this third rate party which breathed life into the BJP and helped it come to power in Karnataka”, he said, recalling JD(S)’s ruling coalition with the saffron party in Karnataka.
