Rahul, Priyanka slam BJP after govt falls in Karnataka

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and party General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi on Tuesday slammed the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) after the 14-month-old Congress-Janata Dal (Secular) coalition government in Karnataka failed to prove its majority in the floor test in the state Assembly.

"From its first day, the Cong-JD(S) alliance in Karnataka was a target for vested interests, both within and outside, who saw the alliance as a threat and an obstacle in their path to power. Their greed won today. Democracy, honesty and the people of Karnataka lost," Rahul Gandhi tweeted.

His sister Priyanka Gandhi also slammed the BJP, saying one day it will discover that everything cannot be bought and till then the citizens will have to endure their unbridled corruption.

"One day the BJP will discover that everything cannot be bought, everyone cannot be bullied and every lie is eventually exposed," she said in a series of tweets.

"Until then I suppose the citizens of our country will have to endure their unbridled corruption, the systematic dismantling of institutions that protect the people's interests and the weakening of a democracy that took decades of toil and sacrifice to build," she said in another tweet.

The Congress leaders remarks came after the Congress-JD(S) government lost the trust vote on the floor of the Karnataka Assembly by six votes after a four-day debate on the confidence motion that was moved by Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy.

Of the 225-member Assembly, 20 legislators were absent for the floor test, reducing the House strength to 205 with 103 as the halfway mark for simple majority. In the division of votes, 99 were for the motion and 105 against it.

Political crisis gripped the 14-month-old fledgling government in Karnataka after 13 Congress and 3 JD-S rebels resigned between July 1 and July 10 in protest against weak leadership and lack of development across the southern state.