Leader of the Opposition in the Legislative Assembly Siddaramaiah, Leader of the Opposition in the Legislative Council S.R. Patil, KPCC president G. Parameshwara and KPYCC president Rizwan Arshad were detained while they were trying to lay siege to the residence of Chief Minister Jagadish Shettar, demanding his resignation for the government’s “failure” on all fronts. They were later released.
Addressing Youth Congress workers at the Freedom Park here, Mr. Siddaramaiah said the government should go before it was ousted by the people in the Assembly elections. He called upon party workers to strive to remove the BJP from power.
Mr. Siddaramaiah said that BJP leader B.S. Yeddyurappa himself had dubbed the Shettar government “immoral” and the very existence of this government was a black mark on Karnataka.
BJP leaders such as Ananth Kumar, D.V. Sadananda Gowda and Mr. Shettar had brought the State to the brink by their wrong policies and programmes, he charged and described Mr. Shettar as the weakest Chief Minister the State had seen.
Dr. Parameshwara said the BJP had failed to implement the promises made in the manifesto and its achievements were zero. KPCC vice-president A. Krishnappa called upon the Youth Congress members to work towards ousting the government. The former working president of the party’s State unit D.K. Shivakumar, Deputy Leader of the Congress in the Legislative Council Dayananda Reddy, the former Minister Ramalinga Reddy, MLA, and N.L. Narendra Babu, MLA, spoke.
Yellow leaf disease
AICC president and National Advisory Council chairperson Sonia Gandhi has in a letter to Dr. Parameshwara informed him that she had taken up the matter of yellow leaf disease affecting arecanut in Karnataka, resulting in huge losses to the growers, with the Ministry of Finance.
