The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Tricky situation for Yediyurappa

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Feb 13, 2006

Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Tricky situation for Yediyurappa

T.S. Ranganna

His stand on the packages of previous governments will be watched

Bangalore: There is scepticism and even concern in the ruling parties over the fate of the special packages announced during the tenure of the S.M. Krishna and Dharam Singh governments.

Some of the packages have remained only on paper, and no effort has been made to initiate action on their implementation. Politics guided the announcement of packages which were no more than ad hoc decisions running against the national policy of planned development adopted in 1950.

In all, the Government had committed itself to spending Rs. 4,700 crores on more than six special packages. The politics of package came to the fore when the Krishna Government announced a Rs. 3,300-crore development plan for Bellary district. It was announced mainly to assuage the feelings of Congress workers in the district who were unhappy over party President Sonia Gandhi giving up the Bellary Lok Sabha seat for the Rae Bareilly seat in Uttar Pradesh.

BJP criticism

Encouraged by the Bellary package, the Congress units in some other districts also demanded and got packages. But barring the Bellary package, the others proved to be non-starters.

The BJP, when in the Opposition, had criticised the package approach to development and warned that it would affect planned programmes. It had also questioned the need for spending such huge funds on Bellary district, merely because Ms. Gandhi had given up the seat.

State BJP President Jagadish Shettar, who was then Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly, had criticised the Krishna regime as a "package government." He had taken the Government to task for neglecting other districts.

Mr. Krishna had announced a Rs. 300-crore package for his home district of Mandya, a Rs. 60-crore package for the Malnad region, a Rs. 880-crore package for farmers in the drought-affected areas, a Rs. 107-crore package for Kodagu and a separate package for helping around three lakh weavers. The Malnad package was announced after the attack by naxals who claimed to espouse the cause of tribal people in the forest areas of Chikmagalur and Udupi districts.

The decision to evict people from the Kudremukh National Park following the Supreme Court orders was one of the reasons for the rise in naxal activities.

Projects such as road construction, power plants and launch of drinking water schemes were included in the Kodagu package.

The Government had mobilised funds from the Housing and Urban Development Corporation and the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development for some of these packages. The BJP did not accept the previous Government's argument that the naxal problem was a socio-economic one and demanded stringent action against the naxals.

The question now is whether Deputy Chief Minister B.S.Yediyurappa, who holds the Finance portfolio, takes a re-look at the very concept of development packages or merely follow his predecessors such as Siddaramaiah and routinely allocate funds for them.

Mr. Yediyurappa had been demanding implementation of the report of the D.M. Nanjundappa Committee on removing regional imbalances.

He used to oppose wasting scarce resources through ad hoc programmes at the bidding of ruling party leaders and workers.

Will the package for weavers and the other packages be implemented?

According to sources in the Government, it has spent Rs. 400.05 crores on construction of roads and buildings, Rs.138.49 crores on education and Rs. 88.90 crores on health in Bellary district.

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