Ruling party MLA stages protest, gets funds for road works

The BJP government on Wednesday suffered embarrassment when one of its MLAs staged a dharna in the Vidhana Soudha against the delay in releasing funds for road development in his constituency.

The second-time MLA for Mudigere (Reserve) constituency in Chikmagalur district, M P Kumaraswamy, staged a sit-in in front of the office of Arvind Srivastav, secretary, Finance department (Expenditure), on the second floor of the Vidhana Soudha.

The senior official, who was taken aback by the snap dharna, requested the legislator to withdraw the protest and discuss the issue with him. But Kumaraswamy said he would not leave the place till the allocated funds are released. Indeed, he alone sat on a dharna for some time.

On learning about the protest, Chief Minister Jagadish Shettar summoned Kumaraswamy and held discussions with him. The chief minister not only assured him immediate release of grants, but also directed officials to issue a government order (GO) to this effect.

The Finance department issued a GO sanctioning funds and asked the Rural Development and Panchayat Raj department to take the matter further.

Later, Kumaraswamy told reporters that despite the chief minister allocating funds for road works to the Rural Development department, the Finance department had not released the money for the past six months. Repeated requests to the department had failed to materialise.

This is not the first time Kumaraswamy has staged a dharna to get his work done. When the State was under President’s rule after the collapse of the JD(S)-BJP government, he had staged a protest during the Janata Darshan to get Rs 14 crore released for the improvement of Kottigehara-Mudigere Road, sources said.