State Congress for polls in May, post-delimitation

Denying the opposition charge that the Congress was bidding for the postponement of the Assembly polls in the state to the year-end, Congress leader and former deputy chief minister Siddaramaiah said on Friday here that while the Congress pressed for polls in May, it should be under the proposed new delimitation.

Holding elections under new delimitation would increase representation for scheduled castes and tribes from 35 seats to 51 seats in the state, from 33 to 36 for SCs and from 2 to 15 for STs.

"Besides providing social justice to these classes, it would bring new faces into the Assembly. However, the Election Commission was the ultimate authority to decide on the issue," he said.

He described the Opposition's charge that the governor was acting like a "Congress puppet" as "totally false" and said, as an experienced person Rameswar Thakur knew how to govern under President's Rule.

He described BJP leader B S Yeddyurappa's charge that the governor was not giving effect to the budgetary proposals made by him as the finance minister as 'totally baseless'. On the other hand, Yeddyurappa had made "several proposals without budgetary allocations", and wondered how they could be implemented without budgetary support.

Substantiating his charge, the Congress leader said Yeddyurappa had announced Rs 1,576 crore for implementing the Nanjundappa Committee report without any allocation. Similarly, he announced a loan waiver for farmers with much fanfare, but provided only Rs 500 crore against the requirement of Rs 1,500 crore. As a result, the district co-op banks were in financial doldrums today. They were unable to sanction fresh loans and the farmers in turn suffered for want of funds for agricultural operations. Similarly, the BJP leader had messed up with the informal ration system, Siddaramaiah charged.

During the BJP and Janata Dal (S) coalition government's 22-month regime, the growth in tax realisation had fallen to 17 per cent from 29 per cent when he (Siddaramaiah) was the finance minister. In fact, introduction of VAT should have increased tax revenue for the state. While Union Finance Minister Chidambaram was saying that the Centre's tax growth had risen by over 40 per cent, in Karnataka it had fallen.

"This shows Yeddyurappa had failed as Finance Minister. He has not managed the state finances properly and now he is making baseless allegations," the Congress leader criticised.

Siddaramaiah charged that some leaders were 'looting' crores of rupees through iron ore mining in Bellary. "Viewing this seriously, the Centre and state governments should evolve a policy so that mineral resources are used within the country," he said.

Criticising the "thoughtless manner" in which arrack ban was introduced, the former deptuy CM said this had pushed up liquor sales three times.

About 28-30 lakh cases of whisky were being sold every month from the earlier 12 lakh cases and it was available in any shop today. Consequently, the poor were spending more or buying spurious liquor. "Can we call this a pro-people, pro-poor programme," he asked.