Siddaramaiah, BS Yeddyurappa in 'jailbird' war of words: After Karnataka CM's jibe at Amit Shah, BJP targets Sonia, Rahul Gandhi

With the Karnataka Assembly election drawing near, the war of words between state chief minister Siddaramaiah and his predecessor BS Yeddyurappa has escalated. A day after Siddaramaiah referred to Amit Shah as a ‘jailbird,’ Yeddyurappa has hit back, that it is Sonia Gandhi and Congress president Rahul Gandhi who ‘will be jail birds soon.’ While the former was referring to Amit Shah’s arrest in Sohrabuddin Shaikh ‘fake encounter’ case, the latter was referring to the Congress leaders’ alleged involvement in the National Herald case. Yeddyurappa is now the BJP’s chief ministerial candidate in the poll-bound state.

It all started with the BJP president Amit Shah calling the Siddaramaiah government , a “corrupt, malicious and oppressive” regime and asked the people to “root it out” in the upcoming Assembly polls. Addressing a party rally in Mysuru on Thursday, the BJP president said, “The Siddaramaiah government has crossed all limits of corruption. In Karnataka, Siddaramaiah and corruption are synonyms. Siddaramaiah means corruption and corruption means Siddaramaiah”. The Karnataka chief minister replied by calling Amit Shah an ’ex-jail bird’ who has chosen ‘former jail bird’ (referring to BS Yeddyurappa) as BJP’s chief ministerial candidate.

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The chief minister was also quoted by ANI as saying that, “Amit Shah has no brain it seems, he is a brainless man.” Reacting to the remark, Yeddyurappa reminded that he and Shah have been acquitted of all the ‘false’ cases filed against them. Amit Shah was jailed in 2010 for three months in charges of conspiring to kill Sohrabuddin Sheikh in a fake encounter case. Yeddyurappa was lodged in Bengaluru’s Parappana Agrahara Central Prison after he surrendered to the Lokayukta Court in an illegal mining case. He has however received relief in many of the cases filed against him, according to The News Minute.

Subsequently, former Karnataka chief minister and senior BJP leader Sadananda Gowda‏ too jumped into the fray, and tweeted that the current form of Congress party was formed by a leader who has spent time in jail (referring to Indira Gandhi). And that leader’s son (referring to Rajiv Gandhi), said Gowda, would also have been in jail but for the fact that he was assassinated.