Kalaburagi: Claiming that Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy had merely become emotional at a recent meeting of the Janata Dal (S) when he shed a few tears, Minister for Rural Development and Panchayat Raj, Krishna Byregowda asserted here on Tuesday that the Congress had not caused him any grief. The minister , who was interacting with the media here, said that Mr Kumaraswamy had become teary eyed because his party did not receive the expected support during the recent assembly poll and the Congress had nothing to do with it.
“Mr Kumaraswamy is not sitting idle crying over his predicament. On the contrary he is striving hard to run the government. He has gone to Delhi to seek help for the state. But he is also a human being and it’s natural for him to become emotional at times. The opposition and the media are blowing the incident out of proportion,” he said, regretting that the role of the opposition seemed to be limited to picking holes in the coalition government.
“But we will give it a fitting reply through our performance,” he added. When his attention was drawn to former Speaker K.B. Koliwad’s contention that some Congress leaders were tormenting Mr Kumaraswamy, Mr Byregowda dismissed it as his personal view. “The Congress has nothing to do with his comments,” he added. Mr Byregowda did not agree that north Karnataka had been neglected in the recent budget. “The last budget has been presented with some modifications. We will not allow any region to be neglected,” he maintained, also taking exception to the comment by a reporter that he had neglected the Hyderabad Karnataka region during his stint as Agriculture Minister.
