Date:13/03/2007 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2007/03/13/stories/2007031308560400.htm

Karnataka - Bangalore

Government not working for welfare of poor: JD(U)

Staff Reporter

Bangalore: President of the State unit of Janata Dal (U) B. Somashekar on Monday charged the Janata Dal (S)-BJP Government with dismantling all the policies and welfare programmes aimed at improving the socio-economic condition of the poor, particularly Dalits, backward classes and minorities, and warned that his party would launch an agitation to mobilise people against it.

He was inaugurating the workers meeting of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Cell of the State unit of the party.

Mr. Somashekar said that as Revenue Minister in the J.H. Patel Ministry, he had got the Karnataka Land Reforms Act amended to give houses, house sites and land to the landless and the siteless. A large number of Dalits around Bangalore had been given one or two acres of barren land which no one wanted.

He alleged that the present Government had acquired thousands of acres owned by them in Devanahalli, Uttarahalli and Bangalore South taluk by paying compensation of Rs. 5 lakh or Rs. 10 lakh some time ago, then failed to utilise the same for the purpose for which it was acquired.

Now, the Government was selling the same to private industrialists and land developers collecting more than Rs.5 crore per acre from them.

Vice-president of the State unit of JD (U) Michael Fernandes, B.V. Putte Gowda, Lokpal Jain and Nazeer Ahmed urged the coalition partners to put a full stop to the trend. This was the first meeting of the cell since 2004.

The Janata Dal (U) leader said that the Government had failed to supply power all over the State affecting the students and farmers.