No Problem With Mayawati or Mamata Banerjee as PM Candidate for 2019 General Elections, Says Deve Gowda

Bengaluru, Aug 6: Janata Dal-Secular (JDS) has no problem with West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee or Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati being fielded as the opposition's prime ministerial candidates for 2019 general elections, said Former prime minister and Janata Dal-Secular president, HD Deve Gowda.

"Don't try to create any type of unnecessary confusion. I have already told that I am running a coalition government here with Congress. First, Congress said Rahul Gandhi will be the prime ministerial candidate. A PTI (Press Trust of India) correspondent said Congress will propose Mamata Banerjee or Mayawati as PM candidate as they want a woman candidate, I told the journalist, I have no problem with it," Deve Gowda told ANI here.

A few weeks ago, while replying to a media query on who the prime ministerial face for next year's Lok Sabha elections will be, Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala said, "Naturally, the Congress president would be the only face to be projected. The Congress would fight this election by putting forward our leader."

Meanwhile, Deve Gowda also took the opportunity to suggest that the Assam's National Register of Citizens (NRC) draft issue should be solved "amicably and peacefully."

"I would like to tell you very frankly that this is not today's issue. The issue was there at the time when I was the Prime Minister. But the point is that about 40 lakh people are doubtful cases. (BJP has completed) four years, what they are doing? Now the elections have come. You want to show that you want to dry them out for whose benefit? Why do you unnecessarily blame others? This matter has been there since 1971," Deve Gowda said.

"There are several issues when (Atal Bihari) Vajpayee was there and Advani (L. K. Advani) was Home Minister. What were they doing? In fact, I was there for hardly 10 months. This issue has to be solved so that there shouldn't be any conflict in bloodshed. It should be solved amicably and peacefully," he added.

Nearly 40 lakh people have been left out from the draft which was released on July 30. The draft incorporated names of 2.89 crore people out of 3.29 crore applicants.

Ever since the list was released, the Opposition has been at loggerheads with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led Centre and questioning as to where these 40 lakh people would go.