Bengaluru: Chief Minister Siddaramaiah is known for popularising ‘Bhagya’ as a string of schemes introduced by him has the word in them. However, it is said that there is a story behind his intention of incorporating the name ‘Bhagya’ in all the schemes that he brought in during his tenure.
Revealing it at an interactive session with the journalists at Vikasasoudha here, the CM said that his difficult and poverty-stricken childhood was the inspiration for him to introduce a string of schemes such as ‘Anna Bhagya’, ‘Shoe Bhagya’, ‘Ksheera Bhagya’ etc.
Recalling his own childhood, he said that as a child he used to wait for festivities to relish good food, which again was always engulfed in uncertainty. “With the hope that nobody in the society lives with uncertainty over food, I introduced Anna Bhagya,” he said. However, adding that over one crore people have benefited from this particular scheme and many more have been benefited from other string of schemes, the CM expressed displeasure against media for remaining mute.
“Lakhs of poor and the needy have benefited from government schemes but the beneficiaries are not coming out in open to speak about how the schemes have changed their lives. The media should become voice of the them,” he said.
Recalling his college days, he said that he could never afford a hostel room due to his financial condition and this experience prompted me to introduce Vidyasri Scheme which availed by over 87,000 students.
The story of Shoe Bhagya too comes from there. Explaining how he used one pair of footwear for three years, the CM said that he had even gone to school barefooted, which compelled him to bring in ‘Shoe Bhagya’ for students who faced similar problems as he did.
He regretted that although his government had come out with several pro-people programmes, there wasn’t enough publicity for them and promised to revamp the Information and Publicity department over the next two years to correct this.
“When I had been to Chamundeshwari hill to perform pooja I had removed my footwear. But media wrote false stories that I had disrespected the goddess by performing pooja wearing footwear. This is far from truth. Even though I had clarified, no media carried the news,” he lamented.
Commenting on the inglorious ‘crow’ episode, the CM said that when he bought a new car, media portrayed him as a superstitious man as they wrote stories saying how the CM abandoned his old car just because a crow was seen perched on the car.
“The truth is that I decided to buy new car two months prior to the incident. Media also said that the crow incident might be a bad luck to me. But I do not believe it because crow eats the food kept after the funeral ceremony and then we distribute food to all gathered,” he said.
Commenting on DySP M.K. Ganapati suicide case, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah claimed that more cops had committed suicide during BJP rule in the state. “Going by the National Crime Records Bureau 24 policemen committed suicide in 2007, and 17 in 2012. The highest number of police committed suicide during BJP rule,” he asserted.
