Dy CM Shivakumar to hold daily breakfast meetings with MLAs to quell discontent
Bengaluru (PTI): Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister and state Congress President D K Shivakumar on Thursday said he would hold regular breakfast meetings with party MLAs and workers to listen to their grievances, complaints and suggestions.
The move is seen as one aimed at containing the brewing discontent among some MLAs and senior party functionaries and reaching out to them ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.
"All the MLAs had confusion regarding the time. I have fixed the time from 10 am to 10.30 am (for the MLAs). I am also deciding a time for our party workers," Shivakumar told reporters.
He said the meetings are aimed at listening to and addressing the grievances of the MLAs, including relating to developmental works in their constituencies.
Shivakumar said these meetings would take place everyday barring the days when he is out of Bengaluru.
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PM Modi, RSS strengthening wall in path of SCs, STs, OBCs: Rahul Gandhi
New Delhi (PTI): Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday alleged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the RSS were strengthening the wall standing in the path of Dalits, Adivasis and OBCs, even as he acknowledged that the UPA took steps to weaken that wall but not to the extent it should have.
Addressing the 'Samvidhan Rakshak Abhiyaan', Gandhi also referred to the function held on Constitution Day in Parliament and said that it is his guarantee, that "Modi has not read" the Constitution.
"If PM Modi would have read this book then what he does daily, he would not do it," Gandhi said, displaying a copy of the Constitution of India.
Gandhi said the country's whole system is pitted against Dalits, Adivasis and backward class people.
He said a wall obstructs the path of Dalits, Adivasis and OBCs and Modi and the RSS are strengthening that wall by "adding cement to it".
"Slowly the wall (obstructing the path of SCs, STs, OBCs) is getting strengthened. Earlier, the UPA government gave MGNREGA, the land acquisition act, the right to food...those were ways to weaken that wall. Today, when I look back, I can say the UPA government did not weaken the wall to the extent it should have, it did not do it as strongly as it should have," Gandhi said.
"However, we used to make efforts to weaken that wall but they (the BJP) are strengthening that wall by adding concrete," the former Congress president said.
Gandhi said a caste survey being carried out in Telangana is a historic step and the Congress will do the same wherever it comes to power.
