Vaccination, Bitcoin case lead to face-off in Karnataka Assembly

BJP and Congress legislators hurled charges against each other over Covid-19 vaccination and the sensational Bitcoin scam in the Karnataka Assembly on Tuesday.

Initiating the debate on the motion of thanks to the Governor’s address, Kudachi BJP MLA P Rajeev blamed the Congress for negative propaganda against Covid-19 vaccines when they were first rolled out in the country.

He also accused the grand old party of not apprehending notorious hacker Sriki alias Srikrishna Ramesh, the main accused in the Bitcoin hacks, when he was named in the 2018 assault case in which Congress leader Mohammed Haris Nalapad was arrested.

“When the vaccines were introduced, there were statements by you calling it ‘BJP vaccine’ and ‘Modi vaccine’. This misled many poor people of this country,” Rajeev said.

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Raising an objection to this, Deputy Leader of the Opposition UT Khader rose to say that no Congress leader had misled citizens on vaccines. He accused the BJP government of ill-treating vaccine makers. While Khader did not specify, he was referring to Serum Institute of India’s chief executive Adar Poonawalla moving to London. “You should be ashamed,” Khader said.

Congress MLA Priyank Kharge mocked Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Cabinet colleagues for promoting "unscientific" thoughts and practises. “People were asked to light a lamp and beat plates as if doing that would drive the coronavirus away,” he said. To this, Kollegal MLA N Mahesh said those were “management techniques” that Modi used to instil “a sense of unanimity” among citizens.

Health Minister K Sudhakar pointed out that the 100 per cent coverage had been achieved in the first dose, whereas it is 90% for the second dose. “This is an astonishing achievement when several nations have not managed even 10% vaccination,” he said.

Raising the Bitcoin case, Rajeev read out Sriki’s voluntary statement to say that he evaded arrest in the 2018 assault case. “An MLAs son (Nalapad) was arrested, but Sriki escaped in a chartered plane along with Nalapad’s brother. Who helped him escape,” he asked. “It was our government that finally arrested him in the case of hydro-ganja peddling. Instead of lauding our police, all kinds of allegations were made against them.”

Congress MLAs opposed this narrative saying Nalapad’s arrest had nothing to do with the drugs or the Bitcoin case.

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