Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has said that he does not attach much significance to BJP national president Amit Shah’s visit to the State ahead of the Assembly elections.
“As president of a national party, Mr. Shah is visiting the State. Let him do it. He will come and go and there is nothing significant in that,” he said while responding to questions by presspersons during his brief halt at Jindal airport here on Saturday. Mr. Siddaramaiah was here to receive Rahul Gandhi, vice-president of All India Congress Committee (AICC), and accompany him to Raichur where a felicitation for the latter was organised.
When presspersons sought to know whether the Congress plans to counter Mr. Shah’s strategic moves, Mr. Siddaramaiah said. “There is nothing to counter it. Mr. Shah or Prime Minister Narendra Modi visiting the State makes no difference as there would hardly be any impact. BJP will not win. It is only the Congress that will win in the next election and retain power”, he said with confidence.
About the predictions by economists that the economy’s growth would be likely be around 6.5 %, Mr. Siddaramaiah said that it reflected the policies adopted by the Modi government. “Despite tall claims being made by the Modi government of faster economic growth, the country had been witnessing slump in industrial production, and demonetisation had brought down the Gross Domestic Product”.
“All the claims of Mr. Narendra Modi are only in his ‘maan ki baat’. The Modi government has only been ‘bragging’ while the achievement is ‘zero’, going by the predictions of economists. The Modi government had promised to generated two crore jobs in a year but after its three-year rule it had been able to generate only four lakh jobs”, he added.
Venugopal, AICC General Secretary in charge of Karnataka, G. Parameshwara, KPCC president, and Santosh Lad, Minister for Labour, were among those present.
