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The Congress on Friday flayed the BJP for being ‘anti-Bengaluru’, with Karnataka minister KJ George saying the saffron party had been relentlessly tarnishing the city’s image.
“They have been calling Bengaluru ‘garbage city’, ‘crime city’, ‘rape city’. Now Amit Shah has said Karnataka’s development is stuck in Bengaluru traffic. This is nothing but a campaign to promote other Indian cities,” said George, the Bengaluru Development Minister.
“They don’t want Bengaluru to emerge as the pride of India. Ever since the NDA government came to power, there has been only promises. Not a single rupee has been allotted for the city’s development. It is Congress government in the State which has been spending on its own.”
George blamed the previous BJP government in the State for the city’s woes, accusing it of gross fiscal mismangement of the civic body, pledging properties to raise money to run the civic body, increasing the corporation (BBMP) area four-fold without any planning. When the previous government stepped down, the BBMP had a debt of ₹3,600 crore, George claimed.
It was Siddaramaiah government which initated Operation Clean-up to mitigate the misery of the citizens.
“When Congress came to power, we had to clear all the debt, recovered all the pledged properties and took up development works,” said George.
Countering Shah’s statement on traffic, George listed the development works initiated by the Congress government and said ₹7,300 crore had been spent on works including roads, bringing 4.5 tmc of additional drinking water from the Cauvery, grade-separators and signal-free corridors at key junctions, white topping of key roads, and the like.
The city generates 4,200-4500 tonnes of solid waste every day. The Civic body has set up 189 dry-waste collection centres, 13 bio-methanisation plants and seven units of 2,300-tonne capacity with the objective of processing waste had been set up.
George said 800 km of the total 1,350 km of storm-water drains had been taken up for concrete lining.
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