From Our Special Correspondent
Daijiworld Media Network

Bengaluru, May 20: Fresh from being sworn in as the new chief minister along with his deputy chief minister and eight cabinet colleagues, Congress party’s Siddaramaiah held the first cabinet meeting on Saturday and announced that an 'in principle' decision on implementing the 5 Guarantees has been taken and a formal order is being issued.

However, Siddaramaiah, flanked by D K Shivakumar, promised to come out with complete details of the financial implications at the next cabinet meeting after the first brief 3-day session of the State Assembly from Monday as the new house needs to be constituted by May 24. He said the tentative calculations indicated that the total financial burden of implementing the 5 Guarantees will be around Rs 50,000 crore, which can be definitely implemented by the State, which has an annual budget size of Rs 3.15 lac crore.

Senior-most legislator R V Deshpande will be the pro-tem speaker, who will run the House during the 3-day session and administer the oaths to all the newly elected members. The speaker of the assembly will also be elected during the assembly session, Siddaramaiah said.

The chief minister also announced that the Congress government will come out with its own budget for the current year in July with the total budget size of Rs 3.25 lakh crore. He promised to revive the Indira Canteens also.

Siddaramaiah utilized the occasion of his first media interaction at Vidhana Soudha after the cabinet meeting to present a financial picture of the State’s tax mobilization and the 'injustice' done to Karnataka by the Narendra Modi government in the devolution of funds.

Talking about the Congress guarantees, which were crticised by BJP leaders including its chief minister Basavaraj Bommai as 'fake guarantees' and the Prime Minister as also home minister Amit Shah for their tirade against the guarantees as 'unimplementable', Siddaramaiah dismissed the BJP claims as 'totally false' and asserted that his government will deliver on the guarantees come what may.

"Our Congress government under my leadership had implemented 158 out of the 165 poll promises during 2013-18 and had launched programmes like Indira Canteens, Anna Bhagya, Shoe Bhagya, Shadi Bhagya and Pashu Bhagya etc, which had not figured in the Election Manifesto," he said and declared that Congress government will deliver on its promises.

Attacking Modi and finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman, who incidentally is Rajya Sabha member from the State, for their gross injustice to Karnataka, Siddaramaiah said the State contributes Rs 4 lac crore to the Central exchequer last year while the total Central devolution is barely Rs 50,000 crore. The 15th Finance Commission had in its interim report had allocated a special grant of Rs 5,495 crore last year, which had been conveniently ignored this year and the Bommai government or the 25 Lok Sabha members from BJP did not raise their voice against the injustice or the denial of funds.

Siddaramaiah accused Modi government of plunging the country into a total debt burden of Rs 155 lakh crore in the 9 year period and wondered how he can attack Congress party of plunging the State in debt burden. Even the Bommai regime plunged the State into a debt burden, he said quoting figures from the State budget,

"We are confident of raising the Rs 50,000 crore required for funding the 5 guarantees through strict tax collection and slashing of wasteful expenditure," he said.

Answering questions on allocation of portfolios, he said: "All this will be done soon. Everything cannot be done in a day."