BANGALORE (TIP): With just 60 hours left for the big day, Congress president Sonia Gandhi on May 2 quickened the pace of campaigning by attacking the BJP for the near-collapse of Karnataka and said her party has readied a plan to reconstruct the state to its glory. The Congress chief addressed two backto- back election meetings in Gulbarga and Bangalore. At both venues, Sonia chanted the accountability mantra and said Congress leaders will be accountable for their every act, if voted to power.
Accusing the BJP of severely damaging the development and reputation of the state, Sonia said the Congress will reconstruct Karnataka. “Sadly, the BJP has floundered and betrayed the mandate of the people. It has earned the dubious reputation of being involved in largescale illegal mining, land grabbing and maladministration. The time has come for ‘badalavane’ (change) and the Congress will restore Bangalore and Karnataka’s pride,” she said. Sonia said Karnataka earlier was looked upon by other states as a model, but, in the past five years, it is known for wrong reasons like corruption. She lashed out at the BJP for not keeping its promises. “The Congress will never make false promises like providing 24×7 uninterrupted power supply to farmers and finally leaving them in lurch,” she taunted the BJP. In Gulbarga, Sonia accused the BJP of conspiring to divide the people based on their caste, creed and religion by sowing the seeds of communal hatred. “The BJP played with the sentiments of the people, and conspired to divide brothers by causing disputes between them in the name of culture and tradition.
The Congress is very much against such communal forces which tried to incite and play with traditional sentiments of the people,” she said. The Congress chief said that as a result of BJP’s indiscriminate illegal mining, there is no water in the region. “The Bellary zone is reeling under severe drought and people are migrating to other states in search of jobs. Thanks to the absence of water and jobs, many people have migrated to other states.” Tom-tomming her government’s achievements, she said the UPA, in order to prevent the exodus of people, implemented the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act to provide jobs to rural people and released crores of rupees to the Karnataka government. “In the past five years, more than Rs 88,000 crore was released to the state under various schemes and programmes, but the BJP government had not utilized this money effectively and the needy haven’t benefited from this. A few BJP leaders became crorepatis with the amount. People should ask BJP leaders where that money gone and people should question them,” she said. Sonia asked the people to make best use of RTI Act to expose “the ugly face of the tainted BJP leaders” who allegedly misused the central funds in the state.