MANGALURU/UDUPI : Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Saturday said though he has no information about the BJP trying to lure Congress MLAs with ministerial berths and Rs 50 crore each, he has information that the saffron party is trying to destablise his government.
Asked about Mandya MLA Ravi Ganiga’s explosive statement, the CM told mediapersons in Mangaluru Airport to ask the question to the one who made the statement.
Later in Udupi, he said BJP might have successfully engineered defections through ‘Operation Kamala’ once to form the government, but said the same tactic will not work again.
“It is true that the BJP is trying to destabilise the Congress government in the state, but it will not be successful. No Congress MLAs will fall into their trap though it may go to any extent to get back to power. BJP leaders may be daydreaming to form the government in the state again,” he said.
Siddaramaiah slammed the Centre for not releasing funds towards drought relief and alleged that Union ministers are not even giving appointments to the state minister to discuss the topic. “We have given a memorandum to the Centre stating that 116 taluks are drought-hit and the state has suffered losses of Rs 33,000 crore. We have a grant of Rs 7,000 crore to mitigate the losses. But not even a rupee has been released so far,” he said.
To a query, the CM said there is no need to attach much importance to the luncheon held at Home Minister G Parameshwara’s house. “We were invited for food and no politics came up for discussion,” he said. The CM said appointments to boards and corporations will be held soon and in the first phase, MLAs will get priority and then party workers.
He slammed BJP MLA Harish Poonja for his social media post, describing him as a ‘collection master’ and said Poonja is a political novice and he should have used that term against the BJP government and its chief minister.
Regarding Dy CM DK Shivakumar’s statement on renaming Ramanagara district as ‘Bengaluru South’ to bank on the Brand Bengaluru to stimulate development in the region, Siddaramaiah said no such discussion was held at the government level. The Congress-Janata Dal (Secular) government had tumbled in 2019 after it lost a trust vote. The collapse was brought about by the resignation of 15 legislators.