Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, who appeared to be in a combative mood, accused the Opposition in the State of peddling lies in their bid to destabilise and weaken the government.
He was speaking after offering the traditional Bagina at Krishnaraja Sagar (KRS) dam on Monday. Mr. Siddaramaiah sounded belligerent and lashed out at Opposition for what he said was an attempt to mislead the public by ‘’constantly lying’’ on availability of funds for development works or by dubbing it as ‘‘anti-Dalit’‘.
There is no department which has not received funds in the State Budget whose size was ₹3.71 lakh crore and apart from the guarantee schemes, other projects are also being implemented, said Mr. .
Many governments have been destabilised and pulled down by the BJP in other states of the country and such an attempt was being made in Karnataka as well, remarked the Chief Minister. Out of 121 ED cases in the country, 115 were against the members of those in the Opposition at the Centre, he said.
“But people of Karnataka are politically astute and will not be swayed by the lies of the BJP-JD(S)’’, he stressed, urging the people of the State not to look at the government with suspicion. “We are with the farmers and the poor of the society and the government welfare programmes have not been affected,” said Mr. Siddaramaiah.
Describing the Congress as pro-farmer and pro-poor, Mr. Siddaramaiah stated that if there was food security in the country today and the nation was self-sufficient, it was because of the policies of the Congress.
Hitting out at the BJP, the Chief Minister said that in the recently-concluded Assembly session, 8 out of 10 days were wasted in raising irrelevant issues. Taking exception to the remarks of the Opposition that he was anti-Dalit, Mr .Siddaramaiah said that nobody had worked for the welfare of the Dalits as much as the Congress.
He said the BJP and JD(S) MPs were quiet on the Mekedatu issue in the Parliament making no efforts to convince the Centre to accord permission for it. “At the same time, they have not raised a word against injustice meted out to Karnataka in the Union Budget,” he added.
Launching a diatribe against the BJP and the JD(S), Mr. Siddarmaaiah said they were against the idealism of Basavanna, Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Ambedkar, and the Congress need not take lessons from them on the issue of social justice.
Deputy Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar, Mandya district in-charge Minister Cheluvarayaswamy and others were present.
