Udupi: State Congress spokesperson Sudhir Kumar Murolli opined that the electoral bond scam revealed by the Supreme Court of India is the greatest corruption the country has ever seen. He was addressing the media at District Congress office at Bramhagiri in Udupi before a meeting convened on upcoming Lok Sabha polls.

Congratulating the Supreme Court for this daring disclosure, Murolli stated that Centre had accumulated thousands of crores through electoral bonds from companies which were threatened by CBI, IT and ED raids. He expressed shock about nationalistic BJP obtaining bonds from a Pakistani company. “The information shows that most of the fraudulent companies in the country have donated to BJP”, he added.

Quoting Supreme Court lawyers Prashant Bhushan and Kapil Sibal, Murolli said that 90% of donations in the yet undisclosed electoral bonds procured in 2018-19 belonged to BJP. “If SBI follows the deadline given by the court, more details of the scam shall be out”, he hoped.

Sudhir Kumar Murolli explained how the then Finance Minister Arun Jaitley under the Modi government had brought changes in the donations act by introducing Finance Bill-2017 which ended transparency in the process. “This horrifying scam has seen light only due to a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) put in the Supreme Court by Association for Democracy Reforms and CPM. 14 out of 30 major companies were raided by IT, ED or CBI before they purchased the bond”, he added. A company building the faulty tunnel which trapped 41 workers and Chennai ‘Lottery King’ Martin’s company which showed only 220 crore profit has also donated thousands of crores to BJP, Murolli said.

When asked about his aspiration to get ticket for Udupi-Chikkamagaluru constituency, Murolli said that his aspiration would end once the name of the candidate was announced and he would work for anyone named by the party. “It is all a part of internal democracy of the party”, he stated.

Speaking on Kota Srinivas Poojary’s candidature, Murolli said “BJP has given tickets to many like Poojary who didn’t ask for it. Even if he loses, he still has the constitutional duty of being the opposition leader”.

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Bengaluru (PTI): Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, his deputy D K Shivakumar along with several ministers and legislators on Sunday staged a dharna here, alleging injustice done to the state by the union government while releasing the drought relief funds.

Holding 'Chombu', the round water pot symbolising emptiness and deception, the leaders charged the Centre with "cheating" Karnataka by not releasing adequate relief to face acute drought, the kind of which was not witnessed in the past several decades.

They held the symbolic dharna in front of the Mahatma Gandhi statue on the premises of "Vidhana Soudha", which houses the Legislature and Secretariat.

The state government has declared 226 out of the total 236 Taluks in Karnataka as drought-hit and said there was a crop loss in 48 lakh hectares of land.

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According to Siddaramaiah, against the demand for Rs 18,171 crore for drought relief, the union government ordered release of only Rs 3,454 crore, that too after the state approached the Supreme Court.

The amount was not even a quarter of the state's demand, he noted.