Dissolve assembly, face elections: Kumaraswamy

As the 2013 assembly elections nearing, JD(S) is getting prepared for the big task with time. As one the first moves from the party, former chief minister and JD(S) state president HD Kumaraswamy on Monday targeted the BJP government in the state.

“There is nothing much left in the government, departments have been weakened and money being siphoned off, many of the departments were leading a truncated identity and executive branch of the government has become hollow, in this condition it was better to dissolve the assembly and go for elections,” Kumaraswamy said.

“The state has seen three chief ministers in just four years. During that period the values in the government departments have eroded threadbare and the government lacked people’s trust following the various charges of corruption on the leaders,” he added.

He also accused the BJP government making wrong moves in order to minimise its debt.

“State’s bad financial discipline has landed the state in a debt amounting to excess of `.1,16,000 crores, which the government was trying recover from the people by increasing the Value Added Tax (VAT) which is already the highest in the country at 14.5%, while many states have brought down the burden of petroleum prices on its people by reducing the state sales taxes the Karnataka government had maintained a dignified silence on the matter,” Kumaraswamy said.

Commenting on the reports of former CM Yeddyurappa asking his colleagues to spend all the state funds, Kumaraswamy said, “It was a ploy by the BJP to siphon the tax payers’ money for preparing for elections, one such fund was the NREGA where over `600-800 crore was kept in waiting in the government coffers without disbursing it to the farmers. The NREGA fund should have been used during the drought relief, but that has not happened. The budgetary outlay for 2012-13 had earmarked a corpus of ` 200 crore for promoting organic farming. Out of which only `50 crore have been sanctioned and only `18 crore have been released, I am sure the rest of the money will be siphoned off to fund the various fringe groups of the BJP including the workers of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh towards the run up to the elections.”

Training his guns at his old foe BS Yeddyurappa, he said, “He was both an opposition leader and a ruling party leader, but he was also playing a third role as a de-facto chief minister, he was wearing so many hats hoping that one of them would help him from escaping corruption charges.”