The Hindu

Davangere, Apr 23: Congress leader Siddaramaiah wondered how the Chief Minister and his Cabinet colleagues were going before the people without doing anything in the last nine months of administration. He remarked that a few of the outstanding performances of the BJP Government were Operation Lotus in which it had bought elected representatives of other parties and mass and erratic transfer of officials for monetary gains.

Launching a diatribe against the BJP Government at a public function held as part of the Congress election campaign at Jagalur, about 48 km from here, on Wednesday, Mr. Siddaramaiah said that he had not seen in his political career of 40 years such mass transfer of officials in a span of six to eight months. Mass and erratic transfer of officials had not only kept the officials guessing but also brought the administration to a standstill, he said.

Referring to the remarks of some BJP leaders about Prime Minister Manmohan Singh dubbing him as a “rubber stamp of Congress president Sonia Gandhi”, Mr. Siddaramaiah said that not even one scam had been reported during the five-year tenure of Dr. Manmohan Singh.

Mr. Siddaramaiah said that Dr. Manmohan Singh was a “clean Prime Minister”. Whereas, he said, in the previous National Democratic Alliance Government there were a number of scams, including the Tehelka one. BJP leader H.N. Ananth Kumar, who pretends to be a “clean politician”, was still facing a CBI inquiry in the HUDCO scam, Mr. Siddaramaiah said.

Unfulfilled promises

R.V. Deshpande, president of the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee, said that the BJP Government had failed to stick to its manifesto announced before the last Assembly elections.

He said that most of the poor who supported the BJP assuming that it would give rice at Rs. 2 a kg were disillusioned now. B.S. Yeddyurappa should not play with people like he did, he said and demanded that he provide rice at Rs. 2 a kg if the Government survived after the Lok Sabha elections.

The Government failed to get power from neighbouring States as the previous Congress Governments had done when the State faced a power crisis, he said and added that there would be serious power shortage in the State in the coming days. Stating that the BJP Government had inexperienced Ministers as they did not know how to run the administration, he said that the administration had come to a standstill in the State.

He called upon the people to weigh carefully both the Congress and the BJP before exercising their franchise in the Lok Sabha elections.

Congress candidate S.S. Mallikarjun assured of getting Jagalur a permanent water source if he gets elected. Veteran Congress leader and father of Mr. Mallikarjun, Shamanur Shivashankarappa, and former Union Minister, C.M. Ibrahim, spoke.