Karnataka   

Jalappa’s resignation sought

CHICKBALLAPUR: A Congress campaign meeting organised here on Friday, in which former Chief Minister S.M. Krishna participated, turned out to be a forum to vent ire against the senior leader and MP R.L. Jalappa.

In his speech, the Congress candidate for the Chickballapur Assembly constituency, S.V. Ashwathnarayan Reddy, trained his guns at veteran leader Mr. Jalappa and said that the latter must resign if he cannot work for the party’s official candidate. Mr. Jalappa reportedly stayed away from the campaigning of Ashwathnarayan Reddy apparently because he was upset over the party not giving a ticket to his close associate G.H. Nagaraj. Consequently, Mr. Nagaraj contested as an independent and Mr. Jalappa is reportedly working in favour of the former.

Visibly irked by this, Mr. Reddy publicly criticised Mr. Jalappa’s stand and demanded his resignation as Member of Parliament. Most of the district leaders who were on the dais supported Mr. Reddy by demanding Mr. Jalappa’s resignation. Senior Congress leader B.L. Shankar declared that the Congress would not budge to the pressures of dissidents and appealed to the people to vote for official candidates of the party in the district. Chickballapur is one among a few segments in Kolar and Chickballapur districts where the Congress is facing rebellion.

Addressing the public meeting, Mr. Krishna took the previous Janata Dal (Secular)-Bharatiya Janata Party coalition government to task for not maintaining the pace of development in the State. He said his party was wedded to the ideals that would achieve overall development of rural areas.

Referring to the coalition set-up in Maharashtra, where he was the Governor till recently, Mr. Krishna said that while the system worked well in that State, the power-greedy Janata Dal (S) and the BJP had spoilt it in Karnataka.

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