A war of words has broken out between former CM H.D. Kumaraswamy and senior Congress leader Siddaramaiah with the latter objecting to the bribery charge leveled by HDK and saying he would hang himself in front of the state Assembly if Mr Kumaraswamy proves the allegations.
On Thursday, Mr Kumarawamy had claimed that a Congress leader had taken Rs 20 crore as bribe from former CM B.S. Yeddyurappa for putting up weak candidates in the Assembly bypolls. Mr Siddaramaiah said that HDK was the one known for striking such deals in the past and it had become a habit for him to make baseless allegations. “It runs in his blood. He makes money by sacrificing ethics. There is no morality left in him. He does not even practise what he says,” retorted the Congress leader who had rubbed shoulders with HDK in the JD(S) before 2005.Mr Siddaramaiah wondered why Kumaraswamy had kept for nearly two years and had now made the allegation? “My conscience is clear. I have not done anything wrong. I am neither greedy nor power hungry like him,” he said.
Mr Kumaraswamy asserted that he had not blamed any individual leader. “In Hubli, all I said was that a Congress leader took Rs 20 crore from Mr Yeddyurappa to defeat his own partymen and the same person was now trying hard to be a supreme leader in the state ," he claimed.