Karnataka: Voices against guarantees get louder in Congress, putting pressure on CM Siddaramaiah

Voices within the ruling Congress calling for a reassessment of the five guarantees are getting louder after the party came a distant second in the Lok Sabha polls even after pledging Rs 52,000 crore annually on these programmes.

The promise of guarantees, on which the party rode to power in the assembly polls last year, launched the programmes one after the other that include free bus rides for women, free supply of electricity up to 200 units a month and cash transfer of Rs 2000 per month per woman head of a family. The party replicated the template it pioneered in Karnataka in other state assembly polls as well as the recent Lok Sabha elections.

In the run up to the Lok Sabha polls, Congress MLA HC Balakrishna (Magadi) was the first to suggest that the party regime must weigh on a rollback of the guarantee schemes if the party were to fare poorly in the election. He had told the CM that if people don't elect a good number of Congress candidates, then the government must stop the guarantees and divert that money for other development programmes.


Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) president DK Shivakumar were confident of winning between 15 and 20 out of 28 seats in the state but the party ended up with nine seats. Some of the ministers failed to secure a lead even in their assembly constituencies, leaving the Delhi leadership livid. The Opposition BJP on the other hand got 17 seats, while its alliance partner, the JDS won another two.

M Lakshman, who lost on a Congress ticket from the CM’s native district of Mysuru, has called for a review of the schemes, arguing that people’s mandate in the LS polls suggested they were against continuation of the schemes. Many higher income people, who took benefits of these programmes including free bus rides and monthly financial aid, had voted against the Congress, he told a media conference in Mysuru, while urging the CM to make the benefits available only to the poor and genuinely needy. People in many constituencies voted for the BJP which had been opposing guarantees, he said.

Congress JT Patil (Bilgi) from Bagalkot district has also sought a review. Sections of Congress MLAs think guarantee schemes have come at the cost of other development programmes and have not fetched votes either. Congress MLC Dinesh Gooli Gowda, however, has written to the CM and KPCC President seeking their intervention to stop party leaders from discussing the subject in public.

Forest & Environment Minister Eshwar Khandre on Monday came in support of these schemes and favoured their continuation. In a chat with the media, he said they helped the Congress win all the five seats in the Hyderabad-Karnataka region because of the popularity of these programmes.

Former Chief Minister and Haveri MP Basavaraj Bommai (BJP) said the discussions that the guarantee programmes had not fetched votes showed the Congress designed them targeting political gains.