Ravi demands White Paper on state’s financial condition

Legislator and BJP state general secretary C T Ravi has said that he has prayed before Lord Dattatreya for more than 350 seats for BJP in the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections and prime minister’s post for Narendra Modi once again.

Speaking to reporters after raising alms for Datta Jayanti in the city on Friday, he said that the country requires the leadership of Modi. The future of the country will be safe in his hands, he added.

He said that the country has been able to gain respect at global level after Modi has taken over as the prime minister.

Ravi condemned chief minister for mocking at the Dattamala campaign.

“The chief minister should respect the sentiments of people rather than following vote bank politics. The Datta devotees had started Dattamala campaign to recover Datta Peetha. The movement will continue till its objective is fulfilled, he said and accused that the government of createing an atmosphere of fear during Datta Jayanti, which is wrong.

Ravi criticised the district administration for prohibiting shopkeepers from opening their shops. The deputy commissioner and the district SP have been acting in an extreme fashion to intimidate people, he alleged.

Accusing the Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy of giving lame excuses for not implementing farmers’ loan waiver, Ravi urged the government to release a White Paper on the financial condition of the state.

In a press release, the MLA stated that the Congress-JD(S) coalition government announced loan waiver scheme six months ago. But only a handful of 44 lakh farmers, have been benefited by the scheme so far. Before the commencement of Belagavi session, 377 farmers in Sedam taluk in Kalaburagi and in Doddaballpur were given the debt-free certificates, only to portray that the government has provided loan waiver benefits to the farmers, he charged.

“On the pretext of loan waiver, Rs 1.50 and Rs 2 cess has been imposed on diesel and petrol. The chief minister has now been stating that it may take one more year to complete the procedures on loan waiver,” he lashed out at Kumaraswamy.

He said the government has procured loan up to Rs 2.67 lakh crore. The previous Siddaramaiah government has already burdened the state with loan. In this condition, there may not be any scope to avail of more loan as per the financial discipline of the state. But, the chief minister is not admitting the reality, he alleged.

Ravi said the Union government has released Rs 1.98 lakh crore from the state’s tax share towards various projects between 2014 to 2018 and urged the state government to follow Maharashtra model in farmers’ loan waiver, instead of blaming nationalised banks.