Meet Danish Ali, the man who brought JD(S)- Congress together

NEW DELHI: JD(S)’ Secretary General Kunwar Danish Ali is a key player in stitching the JD(S)-Congress post poll alliance in Karnataka.

After finishing third in the Assembly, JD(S) got Congress support following a hung Assembly.

Even though there exist a strained relations, the two Muslim leaders, each from the Grand Old Party and Janta Dal(Secular) act swiftly and join hands and publicly announced their coliation far ahead of the BJP’s move. The speed with which the post-poll alliance announcement was made was a matter of much surprise.

According to The Hindu reports, Ali, the JD(S) supremo H D Deve Gowda’s confidante was the first to be contacted by Congress veteran crisis manager and Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad to prepare for the alliance. He updated about Azad’s call to both former Prime Minister Deve Gowda and Mr. Kumaraswamy.

The two parties did their homework, and JDS made it clear it is in no mood to go with BJP. Danish Ali had gone public agreeing with the party’s preference to ally with Congress and thus both the parties sealed the terms of their potential partnership.

54-year-old Ali was also behind the JD(S)’ pre-poll alliance with Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).

Ali, a student in Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia University entered politics in 1994 as the national president of the Janata Dal student wing.