Veteran Congress leader KH Muniyappa, a former lawmaker from the Kolar Lok Sabha constituency, on Wednesday accused his party’s MLAs of working towards his loss and said he had written to party president Sonia Gandhi to expel them.
The seven-time MP from Kolar, which is reserved for candidates from Scheduled Caste communities, was unsuccessful in the Lok Sabha elections in May for the first time since 1991. Rubbing salt to the wound was the fact that Muniyappa lost to a relatively unknown S Muniswamy of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) by a margin of more than 200,000 votes.
Speaking to HT, Muniyappa said he had written to Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, AICC general secretary KC Venugopal, Congress Karnataka unit president Dinesh Gundu Rao and Congress Legislature Party chief Siddaramaiah to expel the MLAs.
Muniyappa was the candidate of the Congress-Janata Dal (Secular) coalition and was the overwhelming favourite to win the seat, considering the fact that of the eight assembly segments in the constituency five had been won by the Congress, two by the JD(S) and one by an Independent MLA, who was then allied with the Congress.
“The Congress MLAs identified the BJP candidate and they took the responsibility and funded the campaign,” Muniyappa said.
He said former assembly speaker KR Ramesh Kumar was the leader of this faction.