Siddaramaiah says 2013 polls will be his last

Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly, Siddaramaiah, said on Tuesday that the coming elections would be the last he would be contesting. Thereafter, he would not enter the electoral fray, no matter how much pressure anyone puts on him to do so.

He was speaking at a seminar organised in the city to felicitate him, on the occasion of he completing 40 years in public life.

‘Used black money ’

Siddaramaiah said that one could not contest elections without money power these days. He admitted he too was corrupt in that he had received black money in the past from some people for use in the elections. But, he spends the money solely for elections, he said. However, he had not stooped to the level of looting the exchequer, Siddaramaiah said.

Siddaramaiah recalled that former prime minister H D Deve Gowda, his son H D Kumaraswamy and former chief minister B S Yeddyurappa had created a situation where victory would have been impossible for him without spending money in the bypoll to the Chamundeshwari Assembly constituency in 2006.

The former deputy chief minister Siddaramaiah had won the election by a slender margin of 257 votes. That election and the days leading up to it were one of the most painful experiences for him, he said.

He said BJP could win 110 seats in the last elections using Rs 200 crore given by the Reddy brothers to Yeddyurappa as revealed by Sriramulu. The ‘Operation Kamala’ indulged in by the BJP, to purchase MLAs of other parties, was an unhealthy development, he said.