‘Cong digging my grave, while I am busy with roads’: PM in poll-bound K’taka

The expressway is a 118 Km long project that has been developed at a total cost of around ₹8480 crores.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s jibe at opposition party Congress comes ahead of the Assembly elections scheduled to be held in Karnataka before May 2023. The state of Karnataka is governed by a Bharatiya Janata Party  (BJP) led government helmed by chief minister Basavaraj Bommai. Karnataka will go into elections in 2023 to  elect all 224 members of the Karnataka Legislative Assembly.

At the event, PM Modi also remarked, “Congress dreaming about my grave doesn’t know that blessings of mothers, sisters and people of the country is a protection shield for me”. 

The remarks by PM Modi were made at Mandya district which is one among the nine districts of the Old Mysore Region that includes Mysuru, Chamarajanagar, Ramanagara, Bengaluru Rural, Kolar, Chikkaballapur, Tumakuru, and Hassan districts.

Notably, the Old Mysore Region, with 61 assembly seats, is a stronghold of the JDS. The Congress has also been a major force in the area.

The Bengaluru-Mysuru expressway is slated to reduce travel time between Bengaluru and Mysuru from around 3 hours to about 75 minutes. It will act as a catalyst for socio-economic development in the region.

Addressing a public rally at the inauguration event of the Bengaluru-Mysuru expressway in Mandya, PM Modi said, “Before 2014, the Congress government at the Centre left no stone unturned to ruin poor people. Congress government looted the money which was for poor people.”

He further said that during the Congress regime, the poor had to run from pillar to post to get benefits but under the BJP government, benefits go to their doorstep.

PM Modi said that a lot of work is happening across the country for modern infrastructure, and Karnataka is changing and India is changing.

“In 2022, India got a record investment. Karnataka benefitted the most. Despite the Covid-19 pandemic, there was an investment worth ₹4 lakh crores in Karnataka,” said the PM.

PM Modi said that in the last nine years, houses were made for over 3 crore poor people under which lakhs of houses were made in Karnataka.

The tenure of Karnataka Legislative Assembly is scheduled to end on 24 May 2023. The previous assembly elections were held in May 2018. After the election, coalition of Janata Dal (Secular) and Indian National Congress formed the state government, with H. D. Kumaraswamy becoming Chief Minister.

In 2019, the coalition government collapsed due to resignations by several members of INC and JD(S) in the assembly. Subsequently, Bharatiya Janata Party formed the state government, with B. S. Yediyurappa becoming Chief Minister.

On 26 July 2021, Yediyurappa resigned from Chief Minister’s post and Basavaraj Bommai was sworn in as the new Chief Minister on 28 July 2021.