PM Modi takes on Siddaramaiah over corruption on his home turf of Mysuru

Mysuru, Feb 19: Prime Minister Narendra Modi being felicitated by a saint as he arrives at Bahubali Mahamasthakabhisheka Mahotsava at Shravanabelagola

Prime Minister Narendra Modi today lashed out at Karnataka's Siddaramaiah government over corruption, saying new scams and charges of graft were surfacing "every day" under its watch.

Addressing a BJP rally here, Modi said after he levelled the "10 percent commission" charge against the Siddaramaiah dispensation recently, he received many calls, with people disputing his information about the cut it received, and claiming it was much more. "I can understand the anger of the people of Karnataka," he said, and asked the gathering whether the state wanted a "commission or a mission government."

Karnataka, he insisted, wanted a "mission government" and not a "commission government." In a stinging attack on the Siddaramaiah government at a public rally in Karnataka on February 4, Modi had accused it of setting new records in corruption and said the countdown for its exit had begun. "The Congress government is at the exit gate," Modi had said while dubbing the Siddaramaiah dispensation a "10 percent commission government."

In his second rally this month in poll-bound Karnataka, Modi said the Congress, wherever it was in power, it was acting like "bumps" in the path of speedy progress. He said the party only cared for power and not the aspirations of people. "Every day a new scam, new corruption charges and new allegations are cropping up against their leader and ministers or those related to government schemes," Modi said, as he mounted a scathing attack on the government in the chief minister's home town of Mysuru.

Modi also accused the Congress of spreading "lies and repeated lies", and asked people to question the party over its rule of several decades. "They (the Congress leaders) think that by telling lies, repeated lies, loudly and continuously spreading lies, not for a day but for months on end, wherever they go, the people will believe them....the country will never accept your lies." Modi also announced a six-lane 117-km Bengaluru-Mysuru national highway project to be executed at a cost of Rs 6,400 crore and a world-class new satellite railway station at Mysuru at an investment of Rs 800 crore.