Basavaraj Bommai congratulates Siddaramaiah, Shivakumar

Bengaluru: Karnataka’s outcoming Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai on Thursday congratulated Chief Minister-designate Siddaramaiah and Deputy Chief Minister- designate D.K. Shivakumar.

He also said that his BJP has “not lost self-confidence. We will bounce back in the state”.

Interacting with reporters here, Bommai stated that six days after declaration of results, Siddaramaiah was named as Chief Minister and Shivakumar as his deputy. “We have to accept the verdict of democracy,” he added.

“The people will decide roles in politics. The people have mandated us to be in the opposition. They have reposed more confidence in Congress. They have huge trust in guarantee schemes. They will have to fulfil them,” he said.

“It is their responsibility to see to it that while fulfilling guarantee schemes, the state’s economy should not take a hit. We will have to wait and watch how they are going to manage this,” Bommai added.

“As an opposition, we need to work with responsibility. Politics should not be mixed with matters of land and water. We will warn the government when people are meted with injustice. The year 2023 is important in terms of development and there are challenges,” he said.

Bommai also said that Karnataka is a land of prosperity. “The people love peace here. The development of Karnataka will impact the nation. We will work as an opposition on these premises. The introspection about the defeat is done at various levels. In two to three days, we will conduct a meeting of MLAs and defeated candidates,” he said.

The decision on the leader of the opposition will also be taken at that point of time, Bommai said, adding that there is no dearth of leadership in the BJP.

On the BJP’s defeat, he said: “We had fallen back to reaching out to people with our programmes in constituencies and the Congress’ preparedness was well ahead of us. These are the reasons for the defeat. We have not lost confidence and we will bounce back”.