MANGALURU: Upping the political ante in southern and coastal Karnataka, former chief minister Siddaramaiah on Wednesday trained his guns on the quartet of BJP MPs from the region, dubbing them as “communally virulent.” He particularly came down on Dakshina Kannada MP Nalin Kumar Kateel, dubbing him as “useless.” The three coastal MPs (an oblique reference to Dakshina Kannada, Udupi-Chikmagalur and Uttara Kannada MPs) are products from the communal lab of the RSS and Pratap Simha (Mysuru MP) is following their footsteps, Siddaramaiah claimed.

Inaugurating the Parivartan Yatra organised by the Dakshina Kannada district Congress committee, Siddaramaiah was particularly harsh on Nalin. “He is an MP who knows only about setting fire,” the former CM said, alluding to the comments the MP had made during a protest against the alleged delay on the part of police to nab the assailants of a BJP worker. “This way of thinking is due to his upbringing in the communal lab,” he said.

Alleging that Nalin had failed to bring even an iota of progress in Dakshina Kannada district, Siddaramaiah said the MP had failed to represent the grievances and issues of his constituency in the Lok Sabha. “Should we elect a person with a communally divisive mindset and one who does not open his mouth for his people in the Parliament,” Siddaramaiah asked his audience. It is because of the likes of Nalin who have divided the society on communal lines that the BJP was able to make major inroads in the coastal and malnad region in the assembly polls held in 2018, Siddaramaiah alleged. “The MP has miserably failed to address the woes of rubber, arecanut and pepper growers. He couldn’t bring any relief to them from the Central government,” he said.

Exhorting the workers to take a pledge to defeat Nalin, who is expected to run for a third term, Siddaramaiah advised party workers to rally around the candidate that the party declares for Dakshina Kannada and not let personal aspirations come in the way. “It is BJP’s communally divisive politics that helped them make inroads here, a Congress stronghold not so long ago,” he said.

In a jibe at Narendra Modi, Siddaramaiah said BJP is trying to politicise the martyrdom of CISF jawans at Pulwama, as evident from the statement of B S Yeddyurappa. Noting that it is totally wrong to encash such incidents for partisan politics, the former CM said Pulwama attack was due to the intelligence failure of IB and RAW, and that more number of soldiers have died under Modi’s rule than under other governments.