BENGALURU: In a sharp exchange of political barbs, Union Minister Manohar Lal Khattar took a swipe at Bengaluru’s notoriously clogged roads, claiming one could reach Delhi or Mumbai from the airport faster by air, than make it to their own home in Bengaluru by road. Locals, stuck on Outer Ring Road for three hours, would have nodded in pained agreement.
As the barb hit home, Karnataka RDPR and IT/BT Minister Priyank Kharge clapped back. “Sure,” he said, “people are flooding Bengaluru — not because of the traffic, but because we’ve actually built something worth crowding into. Now,if only the Centre would give us our rightful share of funds instead of just jokes.”
Reminding everyone that Karnataka contributes a whopping Rs 4.5 lakh crore to the Centre, Kharge asked, “And what do we get back?
A gentle pat on the back and a congested underpass?”
The Congress also invoked Chief Minister Siddaramaiah’s remark at the Yellow Line Metro inauguration, where he pointed out that while the Centre and State were to split Namma Metro’s cost 50:50, the actual ratio is vastly different. Karnataka spends Rs 25,000 crore and the Centre Rs 7,500 crore — 87.37 per cent and 12.63 per cent.
By the end of the exchange, it appeared that the road to political harmony was just as jammed as the one to Whitefield.