Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday launched a scathing attack on the Congress and Janata Dal (Secular), saying the two "dynastic" parties were responsible for political instability in Karnataka, and that they "encourage corruption".
Modi also alleged that both parties saw Karnataka as an ATM, and that they found opportunity in instability.
“The Congress and the JD(S) are responsible for the instability. They pretend to be two separate parties but are one in their hearts. They are together in Delhi. They assist each other in Parliament,” he said at a public meeting in Channapatna in Ramanagara district, which is a JD(S) bastion.
It was here that the JD(S) second-in-command H D Kumaraswamy, son of former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda, won the 2018 assembly election defeating BJP candidate C P Yogeeshwara, and is again seeking reelection.
“Both are dynastic parties and encourage corruption," Modi said. "For a very long time, Karnataka has seen the drama of unstable government. Unstable governments provide a chance to loot".
“There is always a fight to loot and (the focus is) not development in the unstable government,” he further said.
Hitting out at the JD(S), he said the party had openly declared that if it got 15 to 20 seats in the election to the 224-member Assembly, then it would be the kingmaker.
“This selfish approach may benefit one family but it causes losses to lakhs of families of Karnataka,” the Prime Minister said.
He also alleged that every vote to the JD(S) would straightaway go to the Congress and bring instability in Karnataka. "Whenever the Congress and the JD(S) come to power, some families thrive but for the BJP, every family of India and Karnataka is the party’s own family, " Modi said.
"When the BJP’s ‘double-engine government’ came to power, bank accounts of three lakh people were opened in Ramanagara. Here, 2.5 lakh families got insurance cover, 50,000 became eligible for Atal Pension Scheme and 7,000 concrete houses were sanctioned," he claimed.
“Congress is synonymous with betrayal. It has betrayed farmers. Congress used to employ its energy to create a system that would burden farmers under debt and then used to pretend about loan waiver,” Modi alleged.
In 2008, the Congress declared a "false loan waiver", the Prime Minister claimed, adding, "This loan waiver was only for those who were associated with the Congress." “When crores of marginal farmers did not have bank accounts and for whom the doors of banks were never opened, how were those marginal farmers benefited when the loan waiver was announced?” Modi asked.
According to him, farmers were forced to borrow money from private bankers in the open market. The benefit of the loan waiver did not reach farmers but “their brothers and relatives (of those belonging to the Congress)”.
The money "reached corrupt people", Modi said, adding "Truth is that the loans of not even 10 per cent farmers were waived. This is the track record of Congress." The Prime Minister said the Congress leaders were "roaming around with fake guarantee schemes" but the reality was that their every guarantee and promise was a "bundle of lies".
Modi reiterated his party’s slogan of ‘Ee Baariya Nirdhara, Bahumatada BJP Sarkara’ (This time’s decision, majority BJP government).
This was Modi’s fifth public meeting in the past two days in Karnataka, which goes to polls on May 10.
Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by The Telegraph Online staff and has been published from a syndicated feed.