Siddaramaiah hits back at Yediyurappa for ‘blatant lies’

NT Correspondent

Bengaluru: Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Thursday hit back against BJP bigwig BS Yediyurappa for allegedly peddling “blatant lies” against the State government.

He replied to Yediyurappa on issues such as the five guarantees, electricity, drought relief and Bengaluru’s Sub Urban Rail project.

On the Congress’ patented Gruha Lakshmi scheme, the BJP leader had claimed that the benefits hadn’t reached half of the beneficiaries. The Gruha Lakshmi scheme provides Rs 2,000 monthly to all “women heads of households” upon registration unless their husbands pay income taxes.

“In fact, 1.08 crore women of the state had successfully registered for the Gruha Lakshmi scheme in the month of October. Among these, only 9.44 lakh women were not credited with money due to reasons such as mismatch of beneficiary's Aadhaar number with bank account, difference in applicant's name and address, etc and 88 per cent of the first month's installment have been credited to the account of the registered beneficiaries,” Siddarmaiah said, adding that the benefits would be delivered to the rest of the beneficiaries soon.

Demand for drought relief from Centre

Siddaramaiah said that the Centre should provide relief to Karnataka as per National Disaster Relief Fund (NDRF).

“I am ready to come with you if you are taking an all-party delegation to the Centre to demand drought relief as 216 out of 236 taluks have been declared droughthit in the wake of severe drought in the state. A total crop loss of Rs 33,710 crore has been estimated, and Rs 17,901 crore compensation has been requested from the Centre,” he said.

“The Union government, which was supposed to release drought relief as per NDRF rules, is delaying it unnecessarily,” he added.

BJP blamed for power price hike

Siddaramaiah pointed out that the Basavaraja Bommai-led BJP government had hiked the rates of electricity back in May.

“KERC (Karnataka Electricity Regulation Commission) had presented a proposal to increase the rates in front of the previous BJP government in March, which was approved by the BJP government and on May 12 – the day before the election results – and KERC implemented the new rates retrospectively from April 1,” he said.

On power shortages, the CM added: “The farmers are being supplied with five hours of continuous electricity in three shifts. Purchase of 300 MW (Mega Watt) from Uttar Pradesh and 600 MW from Punjab has been notified and the process is underway.

Section 11 of the Electricity Act has been implemented. By this, all power generation units in the state have been ordered to produce maximum power and supply it to the state grid.

Row over Suburban Rail funding

Siddaramaiah alleged that Yediyurappa had betrayed Bengalurueans on the promised Sub Urban Rail.

“Yediyurappa said that the Union government has released Rs 450 crore for the suburban rail project of Bengaluru. This is only a half truth,” he said, adding that the original amount allocated for the project had been Rs 17,000 crore.

“Then, in the current year, Rs 1,350 crore has been allocated, but so far only Rs 450 crore has been released,” Siddaramaiah said.