BENGALURU: A fiery HD Kumaraswamy on Wednesday lashed out at the BJP, right from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah to Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa, accusing the party of setting off communal tensions across the country. A day after Union Parliamentary Affairs minister Pralhad Joshi accused Kumaraswamy of being a Pakistan supporter, the former CM reminded the BJP that it wasn’t him who had visited the neighbouring country - an insinuation at PM Modi.
“How the central government, particularly the Home Minister, is behaving is the root cause of the unrest in the country. Karnataka is a peaceful state, but ever since BJP came to power, they are systematically creating an atmosphere of communal chaos where people don’t trust each other. They are demonising communities. Backseat driving of bureaucracy by the BJP, RSS and right-wing organisations are arm-twisting officers too,” said Kumaraswamy. Lashing out at the BJP for calling him a jihad sympathiser, Kumaraswamy asked CM BS Yediyurappa- who is currently participating in the World Economic Forum in Davos- how he intends to convince investors to come to Karnataka when his party has created an atmosphere of fear and division. “What message does the CM want to give investors while his party is creating communal tensions?” Kumaraswamy asked.
The former CM also punched holes in the BJP’s story that its MP Tejaswi Surya and right-wing ideologue Chakravarthi Sulibele were targets of an assault that included stone-pelting by miscreants on the day of pro-CAA protests. “The police recorded no instances of stone-pelting on the day of the protest, but now Sulibele says stones were hurled at him. Police claim seven stones were pelted, but no such incident has been caught on camera, even by the media. Neither is there a police recording on the incident on the day of the protest. Why make such claims now?” Kumaraswamy asked.
The Congress too didn’t hold back in taunting the BJP. KPCC President Dinesh Gundu Rao took a dig at BJP leaders who had accused ‘jihadi elements’ for the Mangaluru airport bomb plant. “Things would have been different for the BJP if it was someone else in place of Aditya Rao. BJP leaders and supporters seem to be very unhappy that the suspect is a ‘Rao’. Had it been a Muslim, they would have politicised the matter,” Gundu Rao said.