•SHEKHAR GUPTA: There are only a few people who believe in total politics in India and H.D. Deve Gowda is one of them. After the 2004 elections, Mr Gowda shared power with the Congress and BJP in Karnataka. Mr Gowda, tell us who was more difficult to share power with and why.

Both parties want to destroy the JD (S). They don’t want the JD (S) to survive in Karnataka as a third force. In the 2004 elections, Congress was reduced to 64 seats. I expected the JD (S) to get 75-80 seats. Due to internal differences, we ended up with much fewer and were then involved in lengthy discussions with the Congress. During our discussions, I tried to persuade Mrs Sonia Gandhi that our party president, Siddramaiah, should be the chief minister. She disagreed on the plea that her party had to shoulder responsibility at the Centre and they could not allow others to become chief minister in the states. I met Mrs Gandhi several times. We held five rounds of discussion. At the sixth round I said, if we cannot agree on Siddramaiah as the chief minister, then we must follow the power-sharing pattern as in Jammu & Kashmir.

•SHEKHAR GUPTA: Is Mrs Gandhi is a tough negotiator?

I was not in a position to dictate terms because I belonged to a regional party. I was prepared to go for polls. But our MLAs were not ready. They said they had no resources. So we took a decision to support Dharam Singh for chief minister and Siddramaiah would be deputy chief minister.

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