The Congress would bring a charge sheet against the BJP in Karnataka ahead of the May 5 Assembly elections to highlight the various flaws of the previous State Government.
Congress general secretary in-charge of Karnataka Madhusudan Mistry said on Wednesday that the party will release the charge sheet against the BJP in Bangalore on April 13. It will highlight the misdeeds of the incumbent Government, especially corruption and misgovernance. The Congress will release its manifesto a week after highlighting its developmental policies and programmes.
Dismissing the allegations of party tickets being sold in the State for crores, Mistry claimed these were mere allegations as no concrete proof had been provided by anyone leveling the charge. However, if anyone has proof they could present them to Defence Minister AK Antony and senior Congress leader Ambika Soni, who are part of the recently constituted panel which is looking after the coordination and election campaign of the party.
Notwithstanding the court issuing showcause notice to Congress president Sonia Gandhi and other functionaries, the party is not perturbed. It defended taking Rs 10,000 each from 2,100 people, who had applied for party tickets. Mistry said that the PCC took the money so as to weed out non-serious candidates and Rs 21 crore collected in this manner, went to the party fund. Asserting that it was a voluntary non-refundable donation, he said that the practice was followed in 2004 elections also.
The party, which is planning to field Sonia and Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi as its star campaigners, also taunted the BJP for not including Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi in the list of those campaigning for the elections. Mistry said that since Modi knows that the BJP cannot come back to power in Karnataka he is avoiding going there for campaigning. “Modi knows that I will expose his bluff,” claimed Mistry, who also hails from Gujarat.
Admitting that some of the people are unhappy over ticket distribution, he said it could not be avoided as there were many claimants to every ticket. Following the Antony committee report, only a couple of persons who had lost elections twice have been repeated this time and only one candidate K Manju has come from the JD(S) to get Congress nomination in the list of 177 candidates released till now. The remaining 47 candidates will be announced soon and may include relatives of various Ministers.