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Journalism of Courage
Another election, another narrative war. In Karnataka, the Congress and the BJP have now locked horns over drought relief and what the Centre has done to alleviate distress in the key poll battleground.
In the past few weeks, both Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman have responded to the Congress-led state government’s allegation about a delay in the release of drought relief. The state moved the Supreme Court to seek an immediate release of relief, saying it submitted the first memorandum to the Centre on September 22, 2023, followed by two supplementary memorandums on October 10 and November 15.
On April 6, Sitharaman acknowledged the delay saying it was due to the involvement of multiple departments assessing requests from states and added that it was “not intentional”. Such delays, the minister said, were “completely avoidable”. Sitharaman’s statement came days after Shah said the Central government could not release it on time because the state government submitted the proposal three months late. A day after the finance minister’s comments, Deputy Chief Minister D K Shivakumar thanked Sitharaman for acknowledging the delay.
The BJP’s strong pushback on the drought issue comes a year after the party, then in power in the southern state, was caught on the defensive when the Congress launched the “Pay CM” campaign to corner it over allegations of widespread corruption. The campaign struck a chord with people and caught the BJP off guard. Though the BJP tried to counter with the “double engine” narrative, it failed to offset the damage.
Earlier this year, the Congress organised the “My Tax, My Right” campaign and the state government staged a protest at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi in February. Chief Minister Siddaramaiah put the “losses” suffered by the state exchequer due to factors such as the reduction of Karnataka’s share in the divisible pool of taxes and “faulty implementation of GST” at around Rs 1.87 lakh crore. The CM said despite the Union Budget doubling between 2016-’17 and 2022-’23, there had been no marked increase in grants allocated to Karnataka.
The BJP, in its response, alleged that the Congress was resorting to theatrics as it was on the verge of bankruptcy after implementing its poll guarantee schemes. “Since the Congress is sure of losing even the few votes it got if they seek votes in Rahul Gandhi’s name, Siddaramaiah is repeatedly making false allegations against the Central government. For the Congress, their capital is just lies,” Leader of Opposition R Ashok recently said.
The BJP’s alliance partner Janata Dal (Secular) has also taken on the Congress, alleging financial mismanagement. Pointing out that in the 2024-’25 Budget the state announced that it had decided to borrow Rs 1.05 lakh crore, state president and former CM H D Kumaraswamy alleged that Congress was piling on a debt burden on the people of the state. “The total debt of the state today is Rs 6.87 lakh crore. Who is going to repay it?” he asked.
