Admitting that he faced a tough task in leading the Congress back to power in Karnataka, former chief minister S M Krishna said on Sunday that he was banking on coalition fatigue to swing the mood in favour of his party in the upcoming elections.

Speaking to The Indian Express in his first interview after quitting as Maharashtra governor, Krishna said Maharashtra should have done a better job of following up on measures announced to stop suicides by debt-ridden farmers in the Vidharbha region.

“The BJP will be our challenge in northern districts of Karnataka while it is the Janata Dal(S) in southern parts of the state,” Krishna said on the eve of his departure from Mumbai to Bangalore. “It is tough, but people have seen the BJP and Janata Dal regimes. They have tasted the rule of a Janata Dal-Congress coalition and a Janata Dal-BJP coalition and they have seen a single party Government before that, so now they can compare and make an assessment.”

“My battleplan is to remind the people of Karnataka the kind of Government they lived under during those five years from 1999 to 2004,” he said, referring to his own term at the helm of the state. “I’ll remind them of the degree of development and the programmes launched at that time which were on a sustainable wicket. Now, it is for the people to compare.”

The 75-year-old former CM, who wanted to make Bangalore the Singapore of India during his chief ministerial tenure, said he was sure that the people of Karnataka were “fed up” with coalitions and had realised how they were the biggest roadblocks for development.

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