CM Siddaramaiah spoke half truths about fund release from Centre: BJP

Bengaluru: Launching a strong counter attack over ruling party’s plans to hold protest in New Delhi on February 7, the BJP leaders, including former chief ministers B S Yediyurappa and Basavaraja Bommai, on Monday asserted that Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has only spoken “half truths” about the Union government releasing funds to Karnataka and tried to “cover up” its failures by planning to hold protest.

Addressing a press conference here, Bommai alleged that under the garb of guarantees, development had come to a screeching halt in the state.

“Even ruling party MLAs accusing their own government of not releasing funds has become a more common occurrence in the state. Karnataka is reeling under the severe drought and the state government hasn’t released funds to farmers. This government is as good as dead for the farmers,” he charged and added that the Congress thinks that they can win the coming Lok Sabha polls by doing such political stunts.

He asserted that the state BJP leaders too would be holding a stir in the city against the failures of state government on February 7.

In a statement, Yediyurappa said Siddaramaiah’s allegations against the Centre at this juncture was clear indication that the ruling party was preparing ground to stop all guarantees after the Lok Sabha polls in the state.

“After coming to power in the state, the CM has revised taxes from all sources such as stamps and registration fees, state taxes, excise slabs, electricity and transport department, still the state government is not able to meet the expenses incurred by the launch of “unproductive” guarantees in the state,” he said and asserted that the state has received Rs 13,985 crore funding based of the 15th finance commission’s recommendations in the last three years.

In a series of posts on X, Leader of the Opposition R Ashoka said that the CM seems to have forgotten the fact that when the 15th Finance Commission was formed in 2018, he was still the CM of this state and being a financial expert, why did he not highlight these lacunas of the commission then and what is the reason for raising it now?