Narendra Modi graft facilitator, lets scamsters flee: Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah
Bengaluru: Continuing his attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah claimed on Friday that he was a facilitator for corruption as he was allowing industrialists involved in various scams to flee the country .
“The BJP is a corrupt party as many of its leaders, including former Chief Minister, B.S.Yeddyurappa have gone to jail. The Narendra Modi government at the Centre is facilitating corruption by allowing industrialists like Vijay Mallya and Nirav Modi to flee the country,” he charged, while replying to the discussion on the state budget in the Legislative Assembly.
His speech was, however, disrupted by BJP members staging a dharna in the well of the House and claiming his government was most corrupt in the country and encouraged goondaism.
The BJP ruckus began when K. Rajanna of the Congress intervened during the Chief Minister’s speech to suggest that he make a request to the Centre to ask nationalised banks to waive off farmers’ loans instead of favouring big industrialists like Nirav Modi. This brought BJP members to their feet but when Mr. Rajanna defended his remarks on the industrialist, BJP members stormed into the well of the House, raising slogans against the Chief Minister Siddaramaiah. Senior BJP members like R. Ashok, C.T. Ravi and Sunil Kumar even threw pieces of paper in the air and also at Speaker K.B. Koliwad in protest.
Ignoring the dharna, Mr Siddaramaiah recalled that his government had waived farmers’ loans to the tune of Rs. 8165 crore which they owed cooperative societies. “We have allocated Rs. 4000 crore for this in the Budget and will use it to reimburse the cooperative societies when we return to power in the state,” he asserted. Dismissing leader of the opposition, Jagadish Shettar’s claim that the BJP would present another Budget when it came to power in the state, he said, “I think the BJP is over ambitious. People have not forgotten the corruption of the last BJP government and the jail term of its leader.”
The House later passed the finance bill in the midst of the protesting BJP members before it was adjourned sine die.
