Bengaluru South, known as a BJP bastion, is witnessing a spirited campaign by Congress leader Sowmya Reddy this Lok Sabha election. Although Congress has managed to win this seat only once, the grand old party of Indian politics has pockets of dominance in this seat as well. After lot of considerations, the Congress decided to field Sowmya Reddy for General Election 2024 from this seat.
The former Jayanagar MLA lost the assembly elections by 16 votes and has challenged the decision in court. She is putting up a strong fight aided by her father Minister Ramalinga Reddy. She is banking on five guarantees of the Congress Government and argues that Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Tejasvi Surya has been active only on X (previously Twitter) and not accessible for people of the constituency.
“People who voted for the MP and the local BJP MLAs are quite fed up because at the end of the day, people expect the elected representatives to be accessible and be able to speak up. Your responsibility first of all is for your voters, but we have only been seeing him on Twitter and just doing some publicity. People from the state are quite upset, amount of money we are contributing, you know GST and everything, if it’s Rs 100, we are just getting a pack of Rs 13 whereas a person from Uttar Pradesh is getting about Rs 333, a person in Bihar is getting about Rs 900 and this is obviously unfair. For the first time in history, states like Karnataka and Tamil Nadu protested in Delhi, in fact it’s pretty sad that a state has to go to court to get the money that we are actually generating, that we deserve,” she argued.
Guarantees Gamble
The election narrative in Karnataka has been around Chief Minister Siddaramaiah’s five guarantees implemented versus PM Narendra Modi’s guarantee. But Sowmya Reddy argues that the BJP has never implemented its promises.
“What is Modi’s guarantee? They gave a guarantee of 2 crore jobs every year, what happened to that, they gave a guarantee for farmers, what happened to that, they said Beti Bachao Beti Padhao, what happened to that? They said women security, what happened to that,” asked Sowmya.
She said it should be contrasted with Congress government’s five guarantees which were promised before assembly elections and have been implemented. “In the past 11 months, people have been extremely happy, people across the state who have been garment workers who have a salary of just Rs 3000, Rs 4000, have been able to save Rs 1500 for bus pass, women are able to go to college and schools and women have been able to go to temples, in fact the temples are flooding with money and also at the end of the day, women should also be financially independent, so this Rs 2000 has made a huge impact in all of these women’s lives,” she said.
The former Congress MLA concluded by promising the people of Bengaluru South, “I am going to promise that I am going to be an accessible, efficient member of Parliament and be a true representative for not just the constituents of Bengaluru South but also for the entire state, be it the funds that we need to rightly get by the Centre, be it all the different projects that need to happen on the ground over here , I will ensure, I will speak up and I will not keep quiet until all the work is done.”
Voting for the Bengaluru South Lok Sabha seat will take place on April 26 while the counting of votes will take place on June 4.
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