JOIN USBJP state president B S Yeddyurappa on Monday said the saffron party would intensify its protest against Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy if he failed to waive farm loans within a week.
“The chief minister has now said he’d resign if he does not announce a farm loan waiver in one week. We will wait for a week. After that, I will meet our legislators to decide the next level of our protest,” Yeddyurappa told reporters here.
The former chief minister said three farmers had committed suicide in Belagavi, Haveri and Raichur.
“Perhaps, if their loans had been waived, their suicides could have been prevented. The chief minister is trying to take shelter under the coalition government to go back on his promise. Let him be a child of circumstance, but we can’t accept farmers becoming victims of their circumstance,” he said.
The BJP extended support to a bandh that received mixed response all over the state on Monday. The bandh was to demand a farm loan waiver that Kumaraswamy had promised he would announce within 24 hours of coming to power. Yeddyurappa condemned police action against BJP leaders and workers who participated in the bandh.
Yeddyurappa also demanded an apology from Kumaraswamy for saying that he was obligated to the Congress party and not the people. “It’s an insult to the people and to democracy. One will not find any chief minister speaking so lightly about voters in the history of independent India. He should tender an apology,” the BJP leader said.
He also mocked the Congress-JD(S) combine on the “drama” over expansion of the Cabinet.
“There’s a circus underway even after five days the coalition came to power. What development can people expect from them? It’s a strange situation in Karnataka,” he said, predicting that the deadlock would remain till Congress president Rahul Gandhi returned from the US.
He also hit out at JD(S) supremo H D Deve Gowda for calling his speech in the Legislative Assembly last week as “low-level.” The leader of the Opposition in the Assembly said: “I don’t have to learn from Deve Gowda on how to speak as an Opposition leader. The father-sons speak as though they’re born in Satya Harishchandra’s house.”