Karnataka: BS Yeddyurappa to protest for loan waiver from July 7

Hassan: Mounting pressure on the state government to waive off farmers’ loans, state BJP chief B.S. Yeddyurappa on Friday announced he would hold a protest for three days from July 7 to 9 and then a massive agitation involving about 10 lakh farmers in Bengaluru on July 10 if it did not concede his demand.

While ruling out the possibility of  the Union government waiving off farm loans given by nationalised banks as demanded by the Siddaramaiah government, he heaped praise on it for providing fertilisers, seeds and  loans at subsidised rates to farmers.

Noting that  the state had the third highest number of farmers’ suicides in the country with as many as 300 killing themselves, (39 of them in Hassan), he remarked with scarcasm that taking hefty loans was the biggest contribution of the Siddaramaiah administration to the state. 

The state Bharatiya Janata Party chief clarified in response to a query that the support of the Janata Dal (Secular) for his party in the Legislative Council was limited  to the no-confidence motion against Chairman D.H. Shankaramurthy and would not spill over into the coming assembly polls. 

“The Bharatiya Janata Party will go it alone in the polls and contest all 224 seats,” he asserted, exuding confidence that the party would come to power in the state in 2018.  

Moving on, he claimed that law and order had deteriorated in the state since the Siddaramaiah government came to power as 3,102 rape cases and 2534 murders had been registered over the last four years and 420 women had been kidnapped and 19,300 children abused.

Referring to a report by the Centre for Media Studies, a New Delhi-based  non-governmental organisation, which ranked the state first in corruption in public services, he remarked with disdain that  this was the only record set  by Mr Siddaramaiah over the last four years of his government.