Siddaramaiah tried to stop Amit Shah, and failed!

Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah is a confused man. Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah loves beef. He advocates tolerance when it comes to food habits. But he does not even like his political rivals addressing people of his own state and is intolerant of their visits to the state. On one hand, Siddaramaiah promises to the people of his state that his Government would make celebrations to commemorate Tipu Sultan’s birth anniversary even more grander, if the Congress is elected to power in 2018. On the other hand, through his cronies, ensures a virtual shutdown of his state on the contentious Mahadayi river dispute on the same day when the BJP President Amit Shah was scheduled to address the people of Mysore as part of the party’s Parivarthana Yatra in the state.

Siddaramaiah does not seem to be merely confused but even disoriented. Perhaps, the tremendous anti-incumbency factor against his Government and failed governance leading to the prospect of losing power in the state has flabbergasted him. While he flippantly dismisses the filing of an FIR in the case of alleged suicide by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) against his own Minister K J George as no proof of any allegation, he taunts Amit Shah and B S Yeddyurappa as “jailbirds” when the two have been acquitted by the special CBI courts in the cases that were lodged by the CBI when the agency was described by the topmost court of the country as a “caged parrot”.

It must be mentioned here that the CBI enquiry into the case of alleged suicide of deputy superintendent of police M K Ganapathy was ordered by the Supreme Court due to much reluctance and absolute disinterest shown by the Siddaramaiah Government. The Karnataka government had even suppressed the report of the state Forensic Science Laboratory indicating the suspicious nature of the police officer’s death.

Speaking at the rally in Mysore, BJP President Amit Shah said, “Siddaramaiah is corruption, corruption is Siddaramaiah. To list all the information I have of his corruption, it will take a week. I will not be able to go back to Delhi and you will not be able to go home!” As mentioned by BJP President Amit Shah in Mysore that Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah is “synonymous with corruption” many honest officers in the state have found the going tough under Siddaramaiah. Anurag Tiwari, an IAS officer of Karnataka cadre was found dead under mysterious circumstances in May last year. It was reported that Siddaramaiah government had withheld the salary of the officer for 4 months prior to his death. The CBI is also probing the death of Anurag Tiwari.

So rattled is Siddaramaiah by the exposes of the corruption and misdeeds of his government that he did not want the rally of Amit Shah in Mysore to be successful and ensured that a State-wide Bandh was called. However, this tactic of Siddaramaiah did not work as not only did it not deter people from thronging to Mr Shah’s rally but even the common people of Karnataka were left annoyed by the needless bandh called on the issue of Mahadayi river dispute with Goa.

The Mahadayi, also known as Mandovi, river dispute traces its origin to the 1980s. The immediate reason then was Karnataka’s step to build dams, canals and barrages to route the Mahadayi river water to the Malaprabha basin. The state felt that channeling the river water into the basin of Malaprabha, a tributary of the river Krishna, would fulfill the needs of water-scarce districts of Bagalkot, Gadag, Dharwad and Belagavi in the state. A substantial part of the river flows through the state of Goa, for which it is an important river. The Mahadayi Water Disputes Tribunal was formed in 2010 when the Congress was in power in Goa and the BJP in power in Karnataka. The Tribunal adjudicates the sharing of the river water between the 2 states.

After realizing that Amit Shah was going to go ahead with his rally in Mysore despite the call for a state-wide Bandh, Siddramaiah again had a lapse of memory when he denied that he was the one behind the state-wide Bandh on 25^th January. Siddaramaiah had had a lapse of memory recently, too, when he had remarked about Hindutva terror while declaring himself to be “100% Hindu”. May be the 100% Hindu Siddaramiah could influence his “janeudhari” party President Rahul Gandhi and their party leader-cum-lawyer Kapil H Sibal of supporting the construction of Ram Temple at Ayodhya thereby resolving the matter out of the Supreme Court. But, it is this double-speak, pretense and lack of empathy for the Hindu community by the Congress leaders that leads to resentment of their attitude by the Hindus.

In his tweet after Amit Shah’s rally in Mysore, Siddaramaiah had asked Mr Shah to “present facts” about the corruption charges. Once again, this reflects that Siddaramaiah has become even forgetful, for, in the past he has forgotten to mention the details of the 10 criminal cases against him to the Election Commission. His former party boss H D Kumaraswamy (Siddaramaiah had left Janata Dal Secular to join the Congress in 2006) presented “facts” when he accused Siddaramaiah of concealing information regarding his involvement in criminal cases from the Election Commission in 2013. In another glaring example of his disorientation, Siddaramaiah accused the BJP of being “dishonest” in its concern for Dalits, while neglecting the problems of the community. Recently, a few days back, a Dalit school girl was gang-raped and murdered in Vijayapura district and the Chief Minister only visited the family after a receiving a lot of flakfor his callous attitude on the incident.