Senior Congress leader Siddaramaiah in a series of tweets on Thursday demanded the resignation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union minister of finance Nirmala Sitharaman. Siddaramaiah said that the Prime Minister is responsible for all the failures that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has suffered since 2014 and held Sitharaman responsible for ‘failed policies’.
“If the performances of ministers were the yardstick to reshuffle the cabinet, Narendra Modi should have been removed from PMO first. He is directly responsible for all the failures of the BJP government since 2014,” the former Karnataka chief minister tweeted, tagging official handles of the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Prime Minister’s office and of Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself.
Siddaramaiah took potshots at the Union finance minister next, blaming her for what he termed ‘failed policies’. He said that the demonetisation exercise and the implementation of the Goods and Service Tax (GST) regime ‘pushed the country to distress’. In his tweet he tagged Nirmala Sitharaman and asked her to step down while claiming that she was ‘responsible for all the economic failures.’
In his series of tweets, Siddaramaiah used the hashtag ‘Failed Reshuffle’ to criticise the induction of the new ministers to the Union cabinet. He also lamented the stepping down of Harsh Vardhan from the post of Union health minister claiming that major Covid-19 related decisions were undertaken by the Prime Minister.
He also said that with 77 ministers the BJP-led government walked back on its promise of ‘minimum government, maximum governance’ and said that the inductions show ‘maximum government, minimum governance’. He also said that the induction exercise was insignificant as the Prime Minister ‘takes all the major decisions’.
Siddaramiah in reference to the recent reports of factionalism in Karnataka BJP said that the party lacks internal democracy. Several Congress leaders including Wayanad MP Rahul Gandhi and senior leader Mallikarjun Kharge attacked the government after the Cabinet reshuffle.
However, four MPs from Karnataka were inducted into the Union cabinet as Union ministers of state on Wednesday. The Udupi-Chikmagalur MP Shobha Karandlaje, Chitradurga MP A Narayanaswamy, Rajya Sabha MP from Bengaluru Rajeev Chandrasekhar and Bidar MP Bhagwanth Khuba were inducted as Union ministers of state.