Anna Bhagya claims: Siddu slams CM

NT Correspondent

Bagalkot

Leader Of the Opposition (LOP) in the Assembly Siddaramaiah on Sunday responded to the claims made by Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai at the BJP’s ‘Janaspandana’ rally in Doddaballapura a day earlier.

Bommai had claimed that it was the Modi-led Union government that had been supplying funds for schemes such as ‘Anna Bhagya’ under the Congress State governments of the past. He had also alleged that there had been corrupt deal under the Siddu government which ruled from 2013 to 2018.

Siddaramaiah who was visiting Jamkhandi town in Bagalkot district on Sunday slammed the CM and demanded an apology for indulging in a “lying competition.” The LOP was visiting his constituency Badami on Saturday when Bommai made the claims.

 “The BJP and the chief minister should immediately tender an apology for the lying competition that got into yesterday in Doddaballapura,” Siddaramaiah said, adding that the BJP had long been peddling factual inaccuracies regarding the Anna Bhagya scheme. “They also spoke lightly about the Anna Bhagya scheme. Everyone in the BJP has harped about this issue over and over again: Modi’s rice in Siddaramaiah’s sacks,” he mocked. “If that is the case, let me ask Bommai a simple question. Check the records of the food and civil supplies department or with the officials of the finance department and present the findings truthfully before the people,” he added.

 “My question is simple. From 2008-09 to 2012-13, the BJP government spent Rs 4,913 crores on behalf of the food and civil supplies department. How then did it come to be that the Congress government spent over Rs18,000 crore on the same from 2013-14 to 2017-18, which is more than what the BJP spent,” Siddaramaiah explained. “If Modi had given us the rice, then why did we spend so much money on behalf of the food supplies department?” he questioned.

 The former chief minister clarified that under his reign, 30 kgs of rice had been given under the scheme alongside other food grains, salt and cooking oil. He also claimed that it was the Modi administration that had reduced the quantity of rice to seven kilograms first and then five kilograms.