Bangalore : A day after declaring that ‘he is the government in Ramanagar’ though the Congress was the ruling party in the State, Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly and Ramanagar MLA H D Kumaraswamy on Friday summoned officials of various departments to the Vidhana Soudha to review implementation of various programmes in his constituency.
The JD (S) leader held a meeting with the deputy commissioner of Ramanagar, the tahsildar, chief executive officer of the zilla panchayat and officials of the Housing department to find the pace of work in their respective departments in Ramanagar. He also sought to know from the officials what assistance they would need from the government to implement various programmes in his constituency.
Kumaraswamy’s exercise comes after his party lost the Bangalore Rural and Mandya Lok Sabha seats to the Congress in the August 21 by-elections. He used to visit the constituency once in two or three months once. But, on Thursday he held a meeting with officials in Ramanagar. He had announced that soon he would be shortly be calling another meeting.
Speaking to reporters after the meeting in the Vidhana Soudha, Kumaraswamy accused the State government of failing to tackle the drought and flood situation in the state and charged ministers with indulging in “transfer business.”
‘Worse than BJP’ : He said that while several districts had been gripped either by drought or floods, the State government had turned a blind eye to the sufferings of the people.
“No minister is visiting drought or flood-hit areas. They seem to be more interested in transfers. This government is worse than the previous BJP regime. People tell me that the transfer rates are too high in this government. There is a flood of (money) collection in Vidhana Soudha,” Kumaraswamy charged.
Chief Minister Siddaramaiah should crack the whip on his ministers before leaving for his China tour to attend the World Economic Forum, he said.
While the loss suffered by areca farmers was Rs 800 crore, the government had recently released a meagre Rs eight crore for their aid, he added.
Praise for police : But, he had a word of praise for the Police department for nabbing Jaishanker, the serial rapist and killer.
He said action should be taken against those officials who helped Jaishanker escape from the Bangalore Central Prisons.