Happy face of Congress
Remember Karnataka’s ‘ever-happy’ former Chief Minister who is now in the Union Cabinet? Rather reminiscent of the BJP’s D.V. Sadananda Gowda, whose face and name sport ‘happiness’ always, you could say K.C. Venugopal ( in picture ), MP, may well be the happy face of the Congress.
His party may have little to cheer about right now but Mr. Venugopal, new AICC general secretary in charge of Karnataka, was all smiles throughout a news conference in Bengaluru. In the city for a three-day consultation with State party leaders, Mr. Venugopal beamed and laughed in good humour all through as he fielded questions from the media. The State Congress faces big political challenges as Karnataka goes to elections next year. That did not stop the AICC leader from putting up a pleasant demeanour. To his credit, it may be said that because of this, Mr. Venugopal won over many dissidents even on his maiden visit. At the end of the media conference, a broad smile again defined his statement that “All differences will be sorted out soon.” Come next year, will he give the Chief Minister and his colleagues in the State a good reason to smile?
Matter of truth
BJP leaders in Karnataka, says the Chief Minister, specialise in lies and in fact, have been trained in that art. According to Siddaramaiah ( in picture ), BJP leaders B.S. Yeddyurappa, Jagadish Shettar and Ananth Kumar are experts in spouting untruths. “They tell a lie a hundred times and it becomes the truth,” he said at an event to mark four years of the Congress rule in Karnataka. Dismissing as “a bundle of lies” the chargesheet released by the Opposition BJP against his government, Mr. Siddaramaiah said: “People who are making these allegations themselves face police cases. They do not have the moral right to point fingers at others and mislead people.”
Mr. Siddaramaiah said the BJP had grown desperate after losing the recent byelections in Nanjangud and Gundlupet. Naming Mr. Yeddyurappa, Janardhan Reddy, Katta Subramanya Naidu and a few former BJP Ministers, he said: “These are just allegations, the BJP leaders have not produced any evidence. The people, too, dismissed these allegations as lies before the byelections.”
‘Uttara Kumaras’ in State
Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and Transport Minister Ramalinga Reddy have ridiculed the State BJP unit for being chicken about fighting for State issues before the Prime Minister and in Parliament.
While the Chief Minister mentioned waiver of crop loans of farmers, Mr. Reddy compared their political rivals to Uttara Kumara, Mahabharata’s cowardly prince who was known to brag before women and the weak. “Everybody knows Uttara Kumara as the man who only boasted about his bravery but was terrified of fighting a real war. Like him, the BJP’s State unit is spineless. It is scared of speaking up before the Prime Minister and pressing for issues such as farm loan waiver. Instead, it only speaks against the Congress through the media,” he said.
The Chief Minister remarked that State BJP president B.S. Yeddyurappa merely pays lip service to the suffering of farmers, but says nothing about their loans in the Lok Sabha.
A desire named car
At the Karnataka Development Programme meeting last week, Belagavi Zilla Panchayat president Asha Aihole complained that she alone was yet to get a new car while presidents of all other ZPs had got theirs. She accused officials of delaying her demands and threatened that she would come to meetings in an autorickshaw if she did not get her car this month.
ZP Chief Executive Officer R. Ramachandran sought to mollify her saying: “We have just received ₹26 lakh for this purpose. We will buy a car for you soon.” Ms. Aihole, however, insisted that she would not wait beyond May. A senior officer sitting in the last row wondered if she as president would be equally impatient about solving people’s problems in time.
Nagesh Prabhu
Firoz Rozindar
Rishikesh Bahadur Desai
