Dharwad: Around 1.5 lakh people witnessed the fourth divisional level mega event ‘Mahiti Utsav and Soulabhyagala Vitarana Samavesha’ which was also termed as ‘Sadhana Samavesha’ of the state government held in Dharwad on Monday.
Ministers, MLAs, MPs, ZP and TP, presidents and vice-presidents, officials from seven districts under the Belgavi division, besides thirty thousand government schemes beneficiaries, and Congress workers took part in the event making it a big success.
Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, who inaugurated the Samavesha took BJP leaders to task, specially the former CM Jagadish Shettar for alleging that Congress leaders were lying about the development works.
Quoting each of the government schemes such as the anna bhagya, ksheera bhagya, and loan waivers among others, the CM questioned Shetter whether these welfare programmes, which benefited around four crores people out of 6.5 crore population of the state, was a lie.
“The people blessed us in 2013, we promoised them 165 assurances in our manifesto and have fulfilled 155 assurances which shows our commitement towards the poor,” he said.
“The BJP during its tenure could fulfill only 20 per cent of its assurances, but we have reached 90 per cent,” he said, adding that he was ready to share the dias with the BJP leaders for a discussion on the matter.
On the mahadayi and the loan waiver scheme, Siddaramaiah alleged that the state BJP MPs were tight lipped when the state’s delegation met the Prime Minister over the Mahadayi issue, though he had written a letter seeking waiver of farm loans taken from nationalized banks, the PM did not respond. “Adding to the woes, finance minister Arun Jaitley rejected the demand making a cheap statement,” he said.
He said that the BJP leaders have no moral rights to criticize the Congress government. Modi and Amit Shah’s magic will not work in Karnataka, he asserted. “As was said by PM Modi ‘achhe din’ only benefited a handful of leaders and industrialists like, Ambani, Adani, and Amit Shah’s son but not the poor,” he said.
The CM distributed sanction letters and other facilities to selected beneficiaries on the occasion.
Ministers HK Patil, RV Deshpande, Vinay Kulkarni, Rudrappa Lamani and a host of Congress leaders were present at the event.
