‘Cong manifesto not Jumla manifesto like BJP’

Former minister B Ramanath Rai has said that the Congress has presented a real manifesto, unlike the BJP’s ‘Jumla manifesto’.

He was addressing reporters during the release of the Congress party’s manifesto for Dakshina Kannada at the District Congress Committee office on Sunday. MLC and District Congress Committee president Harish Kumar released the Congress manifesto for Dakshina Kannada.

“The needs of the district were kept in mind while drafting the manifesto,” Rai stressed.

Vijaya Bank merger

He pointed out that the Narasimhan Committee’s recommendations had been ignored while merging Vijaya Bank with the Bank of Baroda.

“According to the Committee’s recommendations, the badly performing banks should be merged with banks that are doing well. It was, however, exactly the opposite in the case of Vijaya Bank, which was a profit-making bank,” Rai also pointed out.

“The Vijaya Bank Employees’ Union had met the AICC president Rahul Gandhi and had submitted a memorandum to withdraw the merger of the bank. The Congress has assured in its manifesto that the bank would be revived if the party came to power,” he added.

Case withdrawal

Rai, responding to a query on the state government withdrawing 142 cases related to communal riots in coastal region, claimed that a Cabinet decision was taken by the Siddaramaiah government in August 2018. “The process, however, was delayed. The cases were withdrawn as they were found to be false,” he claimed and said that there had been instances when the previous BJP government too had withdrawn cases filed against members of the Sangh Parivar.

KPCC vice president Prof Radhakrishnan said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s slogans have turned out to be ‘slow-guns’. “New slogans are coined so that the people forget the older ones. Public sector companies like the BSNL is on the verge of closure. The Mangaluru airport has been handed over to a corporate company,” he criticised.

“Modi and BJP president Amit Shah have taken the voters for granted,” he added.