Mangaluru: “Right from my childhood, along with my father, I have believed in the principles of Congress. We are all children of one mother and follow the Constitution, but the BJP does not believe in that”, said senior Congress leader Janardhan Poojary on Wednesday, hitting back on former MLC Monappa Bhandary’s invite to join BJP.
Addressing the media persons Poojary said, “I will remain in Congress till my death. There is no question of quitting. Indira Gandhi, Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi have played a tremendous role in my political career,” he said.
He further blamed the BJP leaders over the Yettinahole project controversy. He said, “Sadananda Gowda was the one who initiated the project. Former chief ministers B S Yeddyurappa and Jagadish Shettar backed the project even when Gowda went ahead with the project even before the detailed project report (DPR) was made.
Displaying concern over the project, he said that this project will be harmful to the coastal region. “I want to know who prepared the DPR on the project. In DPR, it says 13.92 hectares of forest land will be used for this project. I want to know who wrote this. Siddaramaiah should make a brief inquiry on who prepared the DPR,” he demanded.
Poojary also showed a copy of the environmental flow assessment report on the Yettinahole project and said, “This report has been prepared by scientists and experts of the union ministry of science and technology. It is clearly stated that there is only 9.55 TMC of water available, but in the DPR it says 24 TMC of water will be available.”
“Over Rs 13,000 crore, the money of the people of Karnataka is being wasted on this project. I want to tell everyone and especially farmers that it will not favour you in any way”, he concluded.