Will probe all scams of Cong. if voted to power: Shah

Bharatiya Janata Party national president Amit Shah concluded his campaign in Karnataka on Thursday with a declaration that the party, if voted to power, will order a fresh inquiry into all the alleged scams in the Siddaramaiah government, including the Arkavathi Layout denotification scam.

“We will ensure that every paisa of the people of Karnataka, which has been taken away owing to mismanagement and scams, is recovered,” Mr. Shah said while addressing a press conference. He said the BJP could not take the Arkavathi scam to its logical end as it was not in power.

He ruled out the possibility of joining hands with other parties to form a government in the State, while claiming that the BJP would come to power on its own with a “comfortable majority”.

Accusing the Congress government of practising politics of caste, dynastic rule and appeasement, Mr. Shah appealed to people to replace this with politics of performance so that the glory of Karnataka’s culture could be revived.

Ridiculing Chief Minister Siddaramaiah for raising issues related to Kannada only towards the fag end of his tenure, Mr. Shah wondered why he chose to observe the Jayanti of only Tipu and not any Kannada icon if he was really interested in promoting Kannada. He also maintained that there was no relation between the BJP and controversial mining baron G. Janardhana Reddy. “Whatever I say is final,” Mr. Shah said in an obvious reference to BJP’s Chief Ministerial candidate B.S. Yeddyurappa’s statement at a public rally that Mr. Reddy’s presence had given elephantine strength to the party.

When asked about the party not fielding a single Muslim candidate, he said: “We do not look at politics from community, religion and caste point of view.”

To another question, he asserted that Mr. Yeddyurappa would complete full term as Chief Minister.

He denied allegations of AICC president that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had indulged in personal attack on the Congress as he did not have any other issues to target the party. “On an average, Mr. Modi may have spent two minutes in his speech on personal attack. But TV channels have shown it for the entire day for TRP,” he remarked.