MUMBAI, MARCH 16: 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.

“Hence, they will vote for a one-party Government, preferably one led by the Congress,” he said.

Krishna’s hurried return to Bangalore comes amid expectations that the Election Commission would hold Assembly polls in the state before the President’s Rule expires at the end of May, not in October or November as the Congress had hoped.

Although his departure from the scenic Raj Bhavan in Mumbai was on the cards for a few months now in anticipation of the polls, Congress President Sonia Gandhi hastened the process this month after the EC indicated that it might not delay the vote because of the need to complete the delimitation process.

Krishna, who resigned on March 5, is seen as one of the few Karnataka Congress leaders with a mass base in a state where the party has at least half a dozen other leaders who do not have as wide an appeal, but are all aspirants for the CM’s job.

His return has not been taken too kindly by these leaders and voices of dissent began getting louder after he quit as governor, delaying his departure and forcing intervention of the high command. The party finally got its act together and announced on Saturday the setting up of four key committees in the state, including the Election Management and Co-ordination Committee to be headed by Krishna.

Krishna was diplomatic when asked how he planned to tackle the minefield that is Karnataka Congress. “The Congress party has always had many issues, they are not of yesterday’s or day-before-yesterday’s making,” he said. “Congress has lived with problems and successfully negotiated itself out of those problems and given a good Government.”

While describing his stint as governor for a little more than three years as a “rewarding experience”, Krishna had a word of advice to the Maharashtra Government on resolving the woes of debt-ridden farmers in the Vidarbha region.

“I think there was no follow-up,” he said referring to Government measures announced to prevent farmer suicides. “Announcement is made but there is no follow-up on the part of the Government to get feedback on whether affected families have benefited from a policy announcement.”

“Much of the problem is to create an awareness among farmers of Vidarbha that suicide is not the remedy,” said Krishna, whose hometown of Somanahalli in Karnataka’s Mandya district lies in a prosperous farming belt. “Maharashtra is known for its co-operative movement and the co-operative network has to be strengthened in that region.”