DK Shivakumar to BJP: Get CBI to probe Bhagyas

BENGALURU: Lambasting BJP leaders in general and Prime Minister Narendra Modi in particular, KPCC campaign committee chairman D. K. Shivakumar on Friday challenged them to participate in a public debate on development of the state rather than release deceptive advertisements to tarnish the ruling party in the run-up to Assembly elections on May 12.

He told the media here a  political party's campaign should not stoop to so low particularly when the media releases include pictures of Mr Modi and party president Mr Amit Shah."If there is even a grain of truth in your (BJP) advertisements - using terms like Kanna Bhagya for Anna Bhagya, coal scam and solar park scam - I double dare you (BJP) to launch CBI investigations in all these schemes or else stop issuing fallacious advertisements like these," he remarked. 

In New Delhi, his senior colleagues approached the Election Commission of India over "misleading and obnoxious" advertisements released by BJP to malign the image of Chief Minister Siddaramaiah.

In the memorandum submitted to the poll body, the Congress demanded action against members of the Media Certification and Monitoring Committee (MCMC) for approving such "scandalous" advertisements. The party demanded that the ECI ban the publication of such advertisements like it did in Bihar on November 4, 2015. 

A delegation of Congress general secretaries Mohan Prakash and Avinash Pandey, party leaders P. L. Punia, Vivek Tankha and Mahila Congress president Sushmita Dev submitted the memorandum to the Election Commission. "That the Karnataka BJP has made grave and vile allegations which are absolutely vague and baseless. These allegations are not based on any verified reports or statistics and broadcasted with an intent to malign the personal image of Chief Minister," read the Congress's memorandum. 

"Such advertisements are not only misleading, but also amount to exercise of undue influence on unsuspecting and innocent voters," it said. 

The party said the MCMC ought to have disallowed the screening and publishing of such advertisements when these advertisements were sent for its scrutiny and approval. "The MCMC has failed in its duty to weed out such distasteful and obnoxious advertisements despite appropriate mechanisms of pre-certification and scrutiny of political advertisements being in place," the memorandum stated. 

"If these were not submitted for approval, strict action should be taken not just against the Karnataka BJP, but also against television broadcasters and publishers of the newspapers where they have appeared," it demanded. 

According to the Congress, one of the advertisements alleged that the Siddaramaiah dispensation had turned Karnataka into hell, and that the state government was responsible for breaking up society, death of farmers and 'patriots'.