Congress mobilising funds through Bidadi project: Deve Gowda

Former Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda on Tuesday accused the Congress government of attempting to “mobilise funds for the party” through the AI-powered Integrated Township project at Bidadi ahead of elections. He urged the Karnataka government to abandon the proposal, saying the land acquisition would “devastate the livelihoods of thousands of farmers.”

Addressing a press conference here, the JD(S) patriarch said: “Please don’t move forward. I sincerely appeal to the government and honourable Chief Minister to put an end to this.”

“The government has taken a decision to stop the survey for the time being. Let the Chief Minister show his magnanimity. More than 40,000 sites are available in Bengaluru. Not only that, so many apartments are empty. Let them conduct a survey there,” he said.

Highlighting the dependence of villagers on agriculture and dairy farming, Gowda said many families owned only small parcels of ancestral land and had no alternative source of livelihood. “They can’t come to Bengaluru to earn their livelihood. They are only dependent upon the land which belongs to their ancestors. They are supplying 60,000 litres of milk every day to Bengaluru,” he said.

The JD(S) has been at the forefront of the Bidadi project, while Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar has constantly sought to remind the party that the project was started when JD(S) leader H.D. Kumaraswamy was the Chief Minister. He has said that the land was notified during Mr. Kumaraswamy’s tenure and he was willing to “denotify it now and go to jail.”