MYSURU : Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, keen to wrest the Mandya Lok Sabha seat, on Sunday stepped up his attack on BJP and JDS, which have come together for the Lok Sabha elections in the state. Slamming JDS state president HD Kumaraswamy and BJP leaders for opposing the guarantees, he said beneficiaries of these schemes will reward Congress and help it win 20 LS seats.
While BJP is claiming to repeat the previous Lok Sabha election performance of winning 27 seats, people will give their mandate in favour of Congress, he claimed. There is only one opposition party in the state now, as JDS has merged with BJP and is dancing to the tunes of the saffron party, he said. JDS supremo HD Deve Gowda, who had once said he wanted to be reborn as a Muslim, has joined BJP and has been praising PM Narendra Modi, eschewing his party’s secular character. JDS, which was reduced from 39 to 19 seats in the Assembly election and faced the threat of vanishing from state politics by next elections, has joined hands with BJP, he said. “Those who are against the poor cannot understand the budget, which has envisioned the overall development of the state. We will further step up development if the Centre gives us the state’s share of Rs 1.87 lakh crore,” he said.
Pointing at development works worth Rs 370 crore in Malavalli, he said the Congress government will not fail to keep up the words like JDS-BJP and questioned the contribution of opposition parties for the development of Malavalli and Mandya district. He said 155 crore women have used free bus service under the Shakti scheme and claimed that the Anna Bhagya is continuing despite the noncooperation of the Union government. He said Congress lost the previous Assembly election as it did not fully apprise the people of fulfilling 158 out of the 165 guarantees promised in the previous election manifesto. This time, the party will take all the programmes to the doorsteps of the people and tell them that Modi is the only PM who lies as his promise of bringing back black money and generating two crore jobs have failed.
‘Modi has copied Siddu’s guarantees’
Agriculture Minister N Chaluvarayaswamy on Sunday criticised PM Narendra Modi for allegedly copying Congress’ guarantees and claiming them to be Centre’s. He said many states appreciate CM Siddaramaiah’s governance, terming him the only leader to take on the Modi government. Speaking at an event in Mandya, he said the government has implemented five guarantees to bail out the poor. Criticising BJP for boycotting the state budget, he said the government has given prominence to the overall development of the state.