Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Friday dared Prime Minister Narendra Modi to reveal to the public the “corrupt record” of BJP’s Chief Ministerial candidate in Karnataka.
Referring to the charges of corruption levelled against the Congress government headed by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, Mr. Gandhi said the Prime Minister had no moral authority to talk about corruption when B.S. Yeddyurappa was the BJP’s candidate.
“How can you talk about corruption when your candidate has gone to jail for corruption?”, Mr Gandhi said while addressing a rally at Gonikoppal in Kodagu district. “Will you be able to disclose the record of corruption by your Chief Ministerial candidate?” Mr. Gandhi challenged Mr Modi.
When Mr. Modi accuses the Siddaramaiah government of corruption, he will have Mr. Yeddyurappa standing by him on one side and four other Ministers of his erstwhile government, who went to jail, on the other, Mr. Gandhi said while seeking to expose the ‘hollowness’ of BJP’s accusations.
He said the Modi government had ‘renamed’ CBI into “Central Bureau of illegal mining”, which had given a clean chit to the Reddy brothers, who along with Mr. Yeddyurappa had ‘looted’ Karnataka of its wealth.
Mr. Gandhi said the Prime Minister was afraid to face Parliament, lest he has to countenance the charges of corruption, banking scams involving people like Nirav Modi and the Gujarat petroleum scam.
‘No courage’
Mr. Siddaramaiah, who also spoke on the occasion, said he had also dared the BJP leaders to come for a debate on corruption. “But they don’t have the courage,” he said adding that the BJP was only interested in “spreading misinformation and misguiding people.”
He sought to know how BJP national president Amit Shah’s son’s company revenues could see a meteoric rise from just Rs. 50,000 to a whopping Rs. 80 crore in one year.
He said his government had instituted a probe by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) into illegal mining even though central agencies had spared the accused.
Leader of the Congress in the Lok Sabha M. Mallikarjun Kharge, AICC General Secretary in charge of Karnataka K.C. Venugopal and others were present at the rally.
Rahul smitten by Kodagu’s natural beauty
Mr. Gandhi has been smitten by the natural beauty of Kodagu’s landscape. “I have not seen such a beautiful place in India earlier,” Mr. Gandhi said before starting his speech at the Congress rally at Gonikoppal. Before winding up his address, Mr. Gandhi again referred to the hilly district’s fascinating scenery and regretted that he was leaving such a beautiful place in a short period as he was on an election tour. But, he promised that he would return soon and stay for one or two days and spend time with the people of Kodagu.
