Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and 24 other congress leaders of the state have come under scrutiny for attending a Rs 10 lakh VVIP dinner organised by their fellow minister.
As reported by Times Now, this incident happened on 16th December, in a public meeting during the Karnataka assembly election campaign. This meal, as per the report, was served on silver plates and was cooked by a chef called from Hyderabad. It was reported that about 500 Congress personnel had access to that meal.
In a sharp contrast, the common party workers who were also present at that public meeting were served low quality and unhygienic food which allegedly was infested with worms.
Possibly sensing an opportunity, the BJP has come out to allege an anti-poor attitude of the congress. The Congress party in its defence has claimed that the plates merely ‘looked like silver’ and that the meal wasn’t a lavish one.
In the past too, Siddaramaiah has been accused of living a VVIP lifestyle at the cost of common people.
It was reported how on at-least two instances [1][2] the police had stopped ambulances in order to let Siddaramaiah’s convoy pass. In one of the instances, a critical patient was on board. After the media and the public started to create a furore over such instances, reports claimed that Siddaramaiah had allowed an ambulance to overtake his convoy. This though wasn’t before him boasting about it on twitter, for which he again was slammed by people.
We had also reported how Congress leader Ramesh Jharkholi, the Small-scale Industry Minister of Karnataka had been in the limelight for organising a lavish wedding of his son.
The wedding had a whopping 1.5 lakh guests in an air-conditioned mandap. A helipad was built for VVIP guests. The day of the wedding clashed with that of a debate in the assembly on an important debate about the drought situation in Karnataka, but the former got the higher priority with many Congress MLA’s skipping assembly for the wedding.