Karnataka: ‘Collect from Congress’ villagers refused to pay the electricity bills citing poll promises

A video from Karnataka’s Chitradurga surfaced on the internet on May 15, showing people creating a ruckus over paying electricity bills. The villagers cited Congress’s promise of providing 200 units of free electricity. Notably. The Congress had made five key promises before the election and one of them was providing 200 units of free electricity to all.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) IT cell head Amit Malviya on Twitter shared a video of the incident. Sharing the clip Malviya wrote, “They tell the bill collector that Congress had promised them free electricity, as soon as they came to power…Go take it from them (Congress), they say…,” the BJP leader said. Adding to this he said, if the Congress doesn’t announce a chief minister soon, there will be chaos all around.

Notably, Congress is yet to announce the next chief minister of Karnataka as a tussle is on between former CM Siddaramiah and state party chief DK Shivakumar.

During campaigning, Congress repeatedly said it would give a stamp of approval for these ‘guarantees’ in the maiden cabinet meeting on the first day of its assuming power in the State. Even the former Member of Parliament Rahul Gandhi while addressing the media said, “We promised the state five things, and within the first Cabinet meeting, we will make these promises a reality”.

The promised schemes were Gruha Jyoti, Gruha Lakshmi, Yuva Nidhi, Shakti, and Anna Bhagya included in the party’s Karnataka poll manifesto.

In the viral video, the villagers can be seen saying, “We won’t pay,” a villager was heard telling electricity bill collector Gopi in the purported video where people are seen sitting on a platform under a peepal tree.

The bill collector then tells them, “You have to pay the bill this month. Let’s see what the government says,” to which the villagers respond, “What can the government say?”

“We will not pay. They (Congress) have said electricity is free, it will be free only,” another villager replies.

“You collect from them (Congress), not us. We will not pay the bill,” the villager says and asks others sitting there not to pay either, (as translated by PTI).

Bescom Assistant Executive Engineer (Rural) Kiran Reddy confirmed it and said people will have to pay the bill if the order is issued from the government.

In the assembly elections, the grand old party promised a lot of freebies. Three of them will put an additional burden of Rs 58,000 crore on the state treasury. On the other hand, the BJP announced only two freebies which would have caused Rs 12,000 crore to the state treasury.