BJP highlighting Mangaluru cooker blast to divert attention from voter data theft, says Congress leader D.K. Shivakumar
The Hindu
Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) president D.K. Shivakumar accused the BJP government of postponing elections to local bodies because it has no trust in the electorate and democracy, and fears defeat
Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) president D.K. Shivakumar alleged that the BJP government highlighted the pressure cooker blast in an autorickshaw in Mangaluru on November 19 to divert attention of the people from the ‘vote gate’.
Addressing mediapersons in Bengaluru, Mr. Shivakumar accused the BJP of planting the blast case to exploit people’s sentiments for its political gains in the 2023 Assembly elections and hush up lapses in the administration.
“Is it an act of terror like in Mumbai, Delhi, Pulwama or Jammu-Kashmir?”
“The BJP government has no significant achievement to showcase to voters. By projecting the blast in a big way, the government wants to steal votes... Whom do you called a terrorist? What was shown on TV? What was shown in the media....nothing,” Mr. Shivakumar said.
“The BJP government claimed it was a cooker blast. Where was the cooker? Where did the terrorist come from? You planted it and the DIG visited the spot with great urgency. It (the cooker blast case) was an attempt to divert the attention from vote-gate (deletion of names from the electoral rolls in Bengaluru). You think people are fools? Today, you are raking up the sentiments of voters for electoral gains,” alleged Mr. Shivakumar.
A day after the incident, Karnataka DIG and IGP Praveen Sood announced that it was not an accident but an ‘act of terror’.
On November 30, NIA took over the investigation from the Mangaluru police.
No room for complacency till counting is completed, Chandrababu Naidu tells TDP-BJP-JSP contestants. The TDP-BJP-JSP alliance will register a comfortable victory in the general elections over the YSRCP, he says. Alleging that the YSRCP has conspired to create disturbances on the counting day, the TDP national president advises the chief counting agents and their teams to see to it that the officials adhere to norms related to counting.