State Congress workers meet, Siddaramiah rips apart BJP Bastion

Mangaluru: The Indian National Congress state workers meet today made its first raid on the BJP’s strongest base by enlisting the failures of the BJP governments in both Centre and state. Chief Minister S Siddaramiah chose to use his phenomenal penchant for statistics and figures to drive home a point that Karnataka had been failed by the BJP governments at the centre and state by betrayal through financial and social factors.

Beginning his addresses with the failures of the Narendra Modi government at the centre Siddaramiah stated that after 2014, Karnataka had got a raw deal in all finance committee recommendations, Finance minister Nirmala Seetharaman, who is a Rajya Sabha MP from Karnataka had betrayed the people of Karnataka by not representing the interests of Karnataka in her budgetary allocations in all sectors, which is in stark contrast with the self-generated socio-economic welfare system by the Congress government in the state. “After taking oath as the new government on 20 May 2023 I and my party colleagues in the government straight away went to Vidhana Soudha and held the first ever cabinet meeting on the same day and set a deadline for unleashing the benefits that we as the political party had promised to the people of Karnataka. By 5, we had created a road map for implementing all our guarantees and implemented all five guarantees within the next 45 days, This shows commitment, conviction and character of the party towards the welfare of the people.”

Taking numbers to prove that the Congress party guarantees had indeed worked wonders for the economically poor and socially downtrodden of the ‘Shakti’ scheme Siddaramiah said that “155 crore women of Karnataka had travelled free in the KSRTC buses all over the state in the last 8 months, starting from June 2023. This singular guarantee had triggered an all-round economic upheaval in the state. Dharmadhikari of Shri Kshetra Dharmasthala, Dr. Veerendra Heggade, had written to me stating that the visitors to the Dharmasthala temple had increased multifold and the temple was teeming with devotees due to the free bus travel scheme of the government.”. This is not just in the case of one temple; all over the state, similar developments were taking place. Siddaramiah added.

Appealing to the workers who had attended the conference, Siddaramiah said, “Perhaps this conference would be the first clarion call of the Congress party before the Lok Sabha elections of 2024, and each one of you must take the success of the Congress party guarantees to each doorstep in the coastal areas, we have to break the BJP stronghold and reclaim supremacy in the coastal parts of the state particularly Dakshina Kannada and Udupi districts. If we can crack this region we will be able to impact the national elections” He said in 2013 and 2018 we failed because our delivery of impact to each voter was not to the expected levels which gave BJP an upper hand “But let us brace ourselves to carry out this task this election” he exhorted.

Training his guns against Prime Minister Modi, and state chief ministers of BJP -BS Yeddyurappa and Basavaraja Bommai Siddaramiah, said “The contrast between the Congress and the BJP’s promises is very wide. While the BJP gave 600 promises during the last 10years,s they were able to meet only 60 of them- not entirely to the satisfaction, but the Indian National Congress had given 160 promises, of which 158 were implemented. One of our guarantees, Grihalakshmi, has reached a level where no other government will be able to reach out. We have reached 1.17 crore women with Rs. 2000 per month in their bank accounts per month. Each woman under this scheme has already gotten Rs. 16,000 each in the last 8 months,” Siddaramiah said.

Touching on the various ideological differences that the BJP has created in the country, Siddaramiah said, “The BJP was thriving on dividing the society based on caste, religion, and language, while the Congress party was a staunch follower of Buddha, Gandhi, Ambedkar, and Basaveshwara’s ideals. BJP had sidelined the mainstay society and was following a majoritarian policy that was bad for a nation”.

Earlier, Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar, AICC president Mallikarjun Kharge, and former Chief Minister Veerappa Moily also spoke.

Over 50,000 workers from all 30 districts of the state attended the conference, mainly from Udupi and Dakshina Kannada. According to the intelligence report, the conference was attended by not less than 50,000 people inside the venue at Adyar, and about 10,000 people watched it from outside the venue. (more later)