Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah not to be with PM Modi in China

BENGALURU: Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah today said he would not be in Beijing when Prime Minister Narendra Modi undertakes his three-day visit to China beginning tomorrow.

"It (my not going) is because of (Gram Panchayat) polls and because the invitation came too late," Siddaramaiah told reporters here, when asked why he was not travelling to China.

Responding to the invitation from Modi, Siddaramaiah said he had earlier itself expressed his inability to visit China, adding, however, that there were no "political reasons" for it.

The two-phase Gram Panchayat polls are scheduled for May 29 and June 2 that will be a major electoral test for Siddaramaiah two years after becoming the Chief Minister and a year after the Modi wave swept the polls in the state in Lok Sabha polls, fetching 17 of the 28 seats for BJP.

Chief Ministers from Gujarat, Maharashtra and Karnataka were expected to be in Beijing when Modi reaches there, with focus on attracting investments for their states.

Gujarat Chief Minister Anandiben Patel and her counterpart from Maharashtra Devendra Fadnavis will however be in China.

They will not be part of the Prime Minister's official entourage but travel separately to be in Beijing when Modi reaches there.

The Chief Ministers will be attending a programme in Beijing to be addressed by the Prime Minister.

This is not the first time Siddaramaiah has declined an offer from Modi.

In March, he had declined an offer by Prime Minister to be the convenor of a task force to implement "Swachh Bharat Abhiyan" and instead preferred to be just a member.

The National Institution for Transforming India had notified three subgroups -- Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan to chair the subgroup on centrally sponsored schemes (CSS), Tripura chief minister Manik Sarkar on skill development and Siddaramaiah on Swachh Bharat.