Bengaluru: Rubbishing the Bharatiya Janata Party’s chargesheet against the four-year-old Congress government in the state as “a bundle of lies,” Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee president and Home Minister Dr G. Prameshwar on Thursday accused the saffron party of trying to mislead the people on its performance.
Speaking to reporters here, the minister said although the BJP claimed 1.25 lakh criminal cases were registered in Bengaluru alone, it did not specify over what period they were recorded. Moreover, the National Crime Records Bureau had placed Karnataka at number 12 in crime rate, far below most BJP ruled states, he pointed out.
“While Karnataka’s contribution to national crime is 4.7 per cent, BJP ruled states like Madhya Pradesh (9.1), Maharashtra (9.3) and
Rajasthan (6.7) are far ahead of it. Only Gujarat (4.3) has a marginally lesser crime rate than Karnataka,” he noted.
“Also the Bharatiya Janata Party claims 2,500 farmers have committed suicide in the state, but it has not specified whether this was in one year or five years. The state’s farmers are in distress, but what support has the Centre given them? State BJP chief, Yeddyurappa too has not uttered a single word in Parliament on the issue or tried to bring any relief to the state,” he deplored.
As for the BJP’s charges on borrowings by the state, he claimed it was maintaining financial discipline and could afford to borrow another Rs 30000 crore if it needed to.
On reports of huge vacancies in the state police department, which had drawn the Supreme Court’s ire, Dr Parameshwar claimed the court was provided wrong data and the government had corrected it, showing that although between 2008 and 2012, only 642 sub-inspectors were recruited, as many as 1306 were recruited between 2013and 2016.
And while 17,000 constables were recruited between 2008 and 2012, during the last three years, as many as 22,457 had been recruited, he said.
“But due to retirement of constables, there are still vacancies. The finance department’s clearance has been taken to recruit 16,000 constables over the next two years which will bring down the vacancies to zero,” he added.
