Congress President Sonia Gandhi alleged in Mangalore on Thursday that the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its “allies” had destroyed the social fabric of society in the State by spreading hatred among people.
Without pointing at any specific incidents, while addressing the Congress workers at Nehru Maidan, she asked her party’s State unit to “fight forces of communalism regardless where they originate from”.
She asked the workers to defeat the “forces of communalism” in the coming Assembly elections in the State.
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Ms. Gandhi said people in the State were “simply fed up and disenchanted” with the ruling of the BJP because it made “empty promises”. “The BJP has betrayed the mandate of the people,” she added.
Ms. Gandhi said that widespread corruption in the State had tarnished the image of the BJP in Karnataka.
She said that the public discontent and anger against the BJP in the State should be converted into “votes for a change and a vote for the Congress” in the next Assembly elections. It depended on how effectively the party workers highlighted the failures of the BJP and policies of the Congress to the people.
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Referring to the cap on the supply of cooking gas cylinders, Ms. Gandhi said that the Congress-ruled states were providing subsidy for three additional cylinders thus taking the total number of subsidised cylinders to be delivered to a customer to nine. She questioned the BJP why it did not do so in Karnataka.
Ms. Gandhi also took the State government to task for not reducing VAT on diesel.
Funds
The chairperson of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) said that the State government was complaining that the Union government was not helping it and was not releasing enough funds. She claimed that the UPA in its last ruling of five years provided a financial assistance of Rs. 80,000 crore to the State. But the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government during its five-year tenure gave Rs. 30,000 crore to the State. Ms. Gandhi said that if the State needed more funds to tackle drought she would put a word to the Union government.