Coronavirus lockdown: Congress accuses Jagadish Shettar's son of misusing Infosys kit

Medium and Large Scale Industries Minister Jagadish Shettar’s son, Sankalp Shettar, and district level BJP leaders are accused of distributing food and other essential kits among the poor that were provided by Sudha Murthy’s Infosys Foundation to the district administration.

Hubballi-Dharwad City-District Congress Committee office bearers have filed a formal complaint against Sankalp Shettar and Hubballi-Dharwad East Constituency BJP President Prabhuraj Navalgundmath with the Deputy Commissioner. Congress leaders have also shared the photographic proof of the BJP leaders distributing food kits with the logo of Infosys.

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Prabhuraj has also shared a photo of him, along with BJP leaders, donating the food grains to a security guard of a newspaper company, on his Facebook page, claiming the Infosys food kit as party’s kit.

Congress District General Secretary Rajath Ullagaddimutt questioned the ‘constitutional’ authority of both Sankalp and Prabhuraj to distribute the government kits among the poor. “District In-Charge Minister Jagadish Shettar has to explain, how his son or party workers who do not hold any government posts are distributing government kits, that too donated by Infosys foundation,” he said.

“We would not have objected if any of their six BJP MLAs in the district had distributed the kits as they have rights, just like Congress MLA Prasad Abbayya. However, Minister Shettar, to promote his son and party leaders, is misusing the Infosys Foundation kits,” he said.

Defending his act, Sankalp said: “I alone did not distribute the kits. There were officials also. I just handed over them.” He, however, falsely claimed that even district in-charge minister was also present at the event.

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The Infosys Foundation has provided groceries worth Rs 20 lakh to the district administration, which were supposed to be distributed among the Gokul villagers. Each kit has rice (5kg), Tur-dal (2 kg), sugar, oil and salt one kg each.

Deputy Commissioner Deepa Cholan said she has instructed the BJP leaders not to misuse the food kits.