BENGALURU: Former Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah on Friday openly admitted that his 75th year birthday celebrations was indeed a political event and not apolitical.
After an hour-long breakfast meeting between himself and KPCC president D K Shivakumar, both the leaders came out of Siddaramaiah’s official residence in Bengaluru to make a statement on the topics which they discussed during their meeting.
"Of course it is political. We are not sanyasis. Neither am I, Rahul Gandhi or D K Shivakumar are sanyasis. However, the event is organised by my friends in the Congress and it will showcase the contribution of my five year government," said Siddaramaiah.
When questioned that the event was being objected to from within the Congress party, Siddaramaiah dismissed it and said that it was all media speculation.
"I never called it Siddaramahotsava, it is the media. I have invited all my senior party leaders including Shivakumar, AICC former president Rahul Gandhi, Mallikarjun Kharge, B K Hariprasad, K H Muniyappa, M B Patil and others. There are no other party leaders at the event and it is being organised by our own Congressmen with R V Deshpande as the chairman of the event committee, along with K N Rajanna, Basavaraj Rayareddy, H C Mahadevappa and Shamanur Shivashankarappa. Nobody has taken exception to the event. This is a milestone for me and is, thus, being celebrated," claimed Siddaramaiah.
The event has led to widespread speculations that the “friends of Siddaramaiah” are hosting the event as a show of strength in Davangere on August 3 to secure a poll position in the CM candidate race.
Such has been the hype behind the event that on Friday even Shivakumar had to "accede" to it and said that during the breakfast meeting even the said event was discussed.
"Among other things which we discussed, we even spoke of the 75th birthday celebrations of the opposition leader which is being proposed by a lot of his well wishers. They want to send out a message on the contributions which he had made towards the state during his tenure and make people aware of it. So we discussed on how it needs to be conducted," said the Vokkaliga strongman.
Earlier, Shivakumar said the two leaders had a fruitful discussion on how to fight against the corrupt BJP government and what needs to be the message which has to be sent out to the party leaders and cadre ahead of the 2023 elections.
"We discussed a lot of issues in relation to the party programmes which need to be listed in August and how to approach the 2023 elections. He (Siddaramaiah) has given a lot of valuable suggestions on how to go about and we will further disburse the same to our district and taluk leaders,” said the KPCC president.
