Mangaluru: Slamming the Bharatiya Janatha Party (BJP), Congress National Spokesperson Priyanka Chaturvedi said that BJP’s agenda was not development but to divide the people for gaining power. Once in power, BJP misrules, misgoverns and continues to grow at the expense of the nation, she alleged.

Addressing the press in Mangaluru, she said, “While the Congress government under Siddaramaiah has worked towards creating a healthy growth environment, we have seen how BJP’s continued neglect of farmers- their issues, the challenges that they face, and the zero respect it has to what they are demanding. This has created a lot of distress in Dakshina Kannada.”

Pointing at the election of Rajiv Chandrashekhar to Rajya Sabha recently, she accused the Modi govenment of nominating and electing non-Kannadigas as Rajya Sabha representatives of Karnataka. “Can they represent Karnataka’s best interest in the Parliament? Isn’t there anybody in the BJP that the party could have chosen to represent Karnataka?”, she questioned.

She also said that incumbent Chief Minister Siddaramaiah had written multiple times to the Centre about resolving the Mahadayi issue but Narendra Modi refused to take it up.

She also alleged that the BJP government in the Centre had not given the Kannadigas a chance to write the IBPS exam in the language they are comfortable with.

“The CRPF headquarters that was supposed to come up in Karnataka has been to moved to Uttar Pradesh, which already has five CRPF centres”, she alleged.

Chaturvedi also said that the union government had shown step-motherly attitude towards Karnataka while releasing the central funds. “BJP government has released Rs 1435.95 Crore to Karnataka but the states ruled by it like Maharashtra received Rs 8,195 Crore, Gujarat Rs 3,894 Crore and Rajasthan Rs 2,153 Crore”, she said