BJP Spending Rs 1000 Cr To Poach Rebel Karnataka MLAs: JD(S)

Bengaluru: The Janata Dal (Secular) on Tuesday alleged that the BJP government at the Centre was spending as much as Rs 1000 crore to purchase dissident MLAs whose resignation has plunged the Karnataka government into a crisis.

In a Tweet, the party said the money spent was 10 per cent of the annual budget of northeastern states such as Sikkim, Manipur and Mizoram.

Alleging that BJP was engineering the fall of the JDS-Congress government, the party sought to know as to where the BJP was getting the money from.

Earlier in the day in Parliament, the Congress staged a walkout in Lok Sabha, accusing the BJP government of poaching rebel MLAs.

“You are aware of what is happening in Karnataka. This politics of poaching should end. Today it is Karnataka, tomorrow it can be Madhya Pradesh,” Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, chief of Congress in Lok Sabha, said in the House, before the party staged a walkout.

On the other hand, former Congress chief minister Siddaramaiah alleged that both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah were involved in destabilising the Karnataka government.

The state government plunged into a crisis over the weekend following the resignation of 10 Congress and 3 JD(S) MLAs. All of them have been moved to a hotel in Mumbai to thwart attempts of horse trading.