Siddaramaiah slams PM Modi over GST reforms, calls him 'deceptive'
Mysuru (PTI): Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah slammed Prime Minister Narendra Modi for claiming credit for the new GST reforms, which took effect on Monday, calling his actions "deceptive".
Speaking at the inauguration of the Dasara food festival at Maharaja’s College Grounds here, the CM sought to know whether PM Modi, who collected excessive GST for eight years, will return all of that to Indians.
Accusing PM of "deceiving" Indians, he said, "It was Modi who implemented GST, it was Modi who increased GST rates, and now it is Modi who is patting himself on the back."
“We were the ones who opposed when GST was increased to 18 per cent and 28 per cent. The very people who collected it all these years are now taking credit. See how cleverly they are deceiving Indians. You should not fall for this,” he added.
Meanwhile, IT Minister Priyank Kharge criticised the recent GST reforms, terming them “too little and too late”.
“It has taken eight years for Vishwaguru (Modi) to realise that they were doing things wrong. Mr (Rahul) Gandhi had been talking about it, saying it is the Gabbar Singh Tax and now they have woken up to it,” he told reporters in Bengaluru.
According to him, in these eight years, these policies have destroyed so many MSMEs and SMEs, many small shops, leading to unemployment—a reality that the Government of India needs to acknowledge.
The Minister questioned the public celebrations over the GST relaxations.
“I don’t understand why everybody is celebrating over a government doing its job. Why are they thanking Mr Modi? He’s not giving money from his pocket, it is the tax that hard-working citizens of the country have paid to the government and they are merely giving it back,” he said.
Dismissing BJP’s promotion of the reforms, Kharge said: “I don’t see whatever this GST Utsav, Dasara bonus, Diwali bumper—what is this nonsense? The last eight years, what was it then? Who pushed the common man, the poor into the well, and now giving them a ladder and BJP is expecting people to thank them for giving them the ladder now to get them out of the well. Like I said, it is too little, too late.”
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Gurugram Police arrest BJP Yuva Morcha member for spreading fake murder story on social media
New Delhi: Gurugram Police have arrested BJP Yuva Morcha member Hariom Mishra, for allegedly spreading a fabricated and communally sensitive story on social media about the murder of a college student in Gurugram.
Mishra who is also known as Shaurya Mishra had shared a collage of four photographs on his X handle earlier this month. He claimed that a 24-year-old college student, identified as Nikita Agarwal, had been murdered by her classmate Arif Khan in Gurugram. In the post, he alleged that the woman was blackmailed, forced into prostitution, gangraped, and eventually killed. He also claimed that Arif dumped her body in a forest. The claims were presented as being based on police sources.
The post went viral and garnering over 1.5 lakh views, and was amplified by several right-wing social media handles across X, Facebook and Instagram. A verification of the claims revealed that no such incident had taken place in Gurugram. A search of credible news reports showed no record of any such murder. The police said this news would have inevitably attracted media attention if it were true.
On December 11, Gurugram Police publicly refuted the claims through their official X handle. They stated that the information which was being circulated was completely false. The police warned that legal action would be taken against those spreading misinformation. Despite the warning, Mishra neither deleted the post nor issued any clarification.
Police in Gurugram confirmed Mishra's arrest on December 16. The police said a FIR was filed after he continued to spread false information about the alleged murder of a Hindu woman by Muslim man. Police said Mishra, a resident of Uttar Pradesh's Kaushambi district, is now being investigated.
Gurugram Police spokesperson Sandeep Singh told The Print that the accused had deliberately misrepresented facts and used objectionable content to spread hatred along religious lines. “Such posts can create serious disturbances in society, and the police take these matters very seriously,” he said.
A reverse image search conducted by fact-checkers at Alt News, revealed that the photographs used in the viral post were unrelated to the claims, while two of the images were traced to a Pinterest account belonging to influencer Maulik Chopra and another image was sourced from an Instagram post by influencer Shivam Thakur featuring a woman named Deepanshi Rawat. The fourth image was found on an unrelated Instagram page. The images depicted different individuals and had no connection to any crime.
Police said they are also investigating Mishra’s motive behind sharing the false and provocative content.
