Ministers, Opposition spar over mismanagement amid Covid spike

BENGALURU: Ugly scenes marked the Bengaluru legislators’ meet in Vidhana Soudha on Monday, with Opposition MLAs charging the government with mismanagement o f the Covid-19 situation. The MLAs said that every day, they get calls from families, with fervent pleas for beds. Shivajinagar MLA Rizwan Arshad claimed that despite being an MLA, he was unable to get a single bed, and asked how the common man was expected to get a bed.

To this, Cooperation minister ST Somashekar, Urban Development Minister Byrati Basavaraj and Health Minister Dr K Sudhakar got up angrily and tried to shout them down, saying, ‘’We have seen many like you.’’ Rizwan and the Congress MLAs countered with “how many”, and things got personal. Both sides were on their feet, abusing each other. The shouting match continued between MP DK Suresh, MLAs Krishna Byregowda, Ramalinga Reddy and Rizwan Arshad on one side, and Byrati Basavaraj , Somashekar and Sudhakar on the other.

“Your government has failed,” Congress ministers said, taking a jibe at the three ministers who had hopped from the Congress to the BJP. They said that if they had not betrayed the Congress, things would have been better managed. When Congress representatives asked how the official death figures showed such a huge disparity in numbers, Sudhakar admitted that the numbers were inaccurate and were being corrected.