Former Chief Minister Siddaramaiah Hits Out At BJP’s ‘Love’ For North Karnataka

With reports of some BJP leaders allegedly demanding statehood for North Karnataka doing the rounds, former Chief Minister and Congress leader Siddaramaiah has hit out at the BJP saying that the party has no right to demand a separate state, Times of India has reported.

Siddaramaiah also said that BJP’s contribution to the development of the region is ‘zero’.

“When I was CM, I gave a lot of money for development of the region. What was their (BJP leaders) contribution when in power?” Siddaramaiah asked. He also said “Mr Advani had said it was not possible to implement Section 371 to give special status to Hyderabad Karnataka. But we implemented it. I used to give a fund of Rs 6,500 crore to six districts of Hyderabad Karnataka every year. After the Nanjundappa Commission report on regional imbalance stated that more taluks in North Karnataka were backward. We provided funds to set this right.” Finally, Siddaramaiah said that there was no need to have separate state.

Earlier, BJP MLA Sriramulu had allegedly supported a bandh call demanding a separate state. However, former chief minister and BJP leader B S Yeddiyurappa and BJP MP Shobha Karandlaje said that the demand for a separate state was not right. BJP leader Jagadish Shettar later attacked chief minister H D Kumaraswamy for instigating the demand for a separate state.