Bengaluru: A day after the arrest of former minister, D K Shivakumar by the Enforcement Directorate in Delhi, Congress leaders and workers staged protests across the state on Wednesday, daring the BJP’s national leadership to "arrest every Congress leader if this could help revive the sliding economy.”
Senior leaders, who held a meeting to discuss the arrest, decided to take on the BJP national leadership, which was out to seek political vengence, in their view.
Speaking to reporters, Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee president, Dinesh Gundu Rao, who led the day-long protests, charged that the BJP leaders at the top strongly believed they could finish off the Congress by blackmailing its leaders.
"The Congress will prove them wrong. Our time will definitely come," he warned, declaring that there was no question of letting Mr Shivakumar fend for himself in his hour of crisis.
"We plan to take our protest against the high-handedness of the Central investigating agencies to the doorsteps of New Delhi too. We will not stop at launching day- long protests here," he said.
The Congress leader added that this was how fascist governments operated. “Whenever they are in trouble or want to hide their failures they change colour to suit their environment. The BJP wants to hide hard facts like joblessness, a sliding economy, lack of recovery in the manufacturing sector and so on,” he charged.
Meanwhile, former Speaker, K. R. Ramesh Kumar , who met Mr Shivakumar’s family , later accused the BJP of playing vindictive politics. "We Congressmen are ready to get arrested whether by the IT or ED, it really doesn’t matter, if the BJP national leadership thinks this will revive the sliding economy," he said.
Mr Shivakumar, who was summoned to Delhi last week by the Enforcement Directorate for questioning in a disproportionate assets case and for other alleged financial irregularities, was taken into custody without warning at the end of four days of interrogation, angering his supporters and Congress leaders. His arrest comes on the heels of the arrest of former finance minister, P Chidambaram, also for alleged financial irregularities.
