Amit Shah a ‘brainless man’, ‘ex-jail bird’, says K’taka CM

Bengaluru: The blame game, verbal attacks as well as taunts have made its way to Karnataka which will go to polls this year. Day after BJP national president Amit Shah criticised the Karnataka Congress, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Friday hit back at the BJP’s top strategist calling him a “brainless man” and an “ex-jail bird”.
Speaking to media, Siddaramaiah said, “Amit Shah has no brain it seems, he is a brainless man.”
Intensifying his attack against Shah and BJP’s presumptive chief minister BS Yeddyurappa, Siddaramaiah took to Twitter and called them an “ex-jailbird”. He also demanded that they come up with proof to back up their charge.
The chief minister’s counter-attack comes a day after the BJP president said, “Siddaramaiah means corruption and corruption means Siddaramaiah”.
However, Siddaramaiah’s comeback to the BJP president, accusing him of corruption, triggered a storm of attacks from BJP leaders who kept the punches coming till late on Friday.
Addressing a rally at Mysuru on Thursday, Amit Shah questioned the Karnataka chief minister’s personal integrity. “The Siddaramaiah government has crossed all limits of corruption. In Karnataka, Siddaramaiah and corruption are synonyms. Siddaramaiah means corruption and corruption means Siddaramaiah,” the BJP chief said at his rally.
Amit Shah had spent three months in jail in 2010 on charges of conspiring to kill Sohrabuddin Sheikh in the 2005 fake encounter case. In December 2014, a court, however, said the CBI had not produced enough evidence to prosecute him and closed the case.
Yeddyurappa, on the other hand, had to quit as the chief minister after an anti-corruption panel indicted him for a mining scandal. He had later spent three weeks in jail, as an undertrial, but was later cleared in the case.
Yeddyurappa took to Twitter and reminded Siddaramaiah that “we are acquitted of all the false cases filed against us”.
He said, “So says a CM who destroyed Lokayukta, misused ACB (Anti-corruption department) and CID (Criminal Investigation Department) and gave himself a clean chit in dozens of corruption charge and complaints against him.”
The BJP leader added: “Lest you forget in National Herald case Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi – who are on bail now – will be ‘Jail Birds’ soon.”
Union Minister Sadanand Gowda also reminded Siddaramaiah that Indira Gandhi who had formed the Congress (I) in 1969 too had been arrested, in 1977. Gowda added, Indira Gandhi’s son would have served a jail term in the Bofors scam, if not for his assassination. “Need more list sir?” Gowda said.