BJP slams Siddaramaiah’s mass grievance redressal programme, calls it ‘collapse of administrative machinery’

As Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and his Congress party claimed overwhelming response to their people-contact Janaspandana programme in Bengaluru on Thursday, where he met hundreds of people from all over the state in the presence of officials from all department, the Opposition BJP took potshots at the programme saying the huge turnout actually reflected on the poor governance.

Over 11,000 applications were registered at the counters in front of the state secretariat Vidhana Soudha, where the government had set up department-wise stalls to address the public’s issues. Siddaramaiah had held a similar exercise on November 27 last year at his home office Krishna, where he had received 4,030 applications. About 98% of them have been dealt with, said the CM. “We wish to take the government to the people…officials have been directed to resolve the complaints we received within one month,” he added.

The program, the CM said, had been organised with the hope that the administrative system should be quickened and the problems of the public should be responded to. He appealed to the public not to listen to the BJP’s “slanders,” saying that this was the same party that had claimed guarantee schemes would “bankrupt” the state. “Our government has implemented all the guarantee schemes within eight months of coming to power…they are pro-poor programs,” he said.


Leader of Opposition R Ashoka, however, called the exercise a “living example of the state’s completely collapsed administrative machinery,” accusing the CM of “using petitioners” for his own campaigning. “Instead of playing drama for public support, the chief minister should instruct his in-charge ministers to go to the respective district centers and taluk centers to listen to the problems of the people,” he said.

Taking to social media platform X, the state unit of the BJP cautioned the CM not to revel too much in the number of applicants for the programme. “Among the people who have gathered, the majority of them have expressed their displeasure at the mismanagement of your government,” the party tweeted.