Over five thousand red volunteers marched through the streets of Chikaballapura to the venue of the public meeting after the CPI(M) candidate G V Sreerama Reddy filed his nomination papers on March 22. Both the procession and public meeting was a sea of red, with red party flags fluttering, and thousands of men and women draped in red.
Addressing the meeting Sreerama Reddy dwelt on the party’s decade long struggle to implement the ‘Perennial Irrigation Project’ based on Paramasivayya Committee report. Its implementation is expected to provide water to Chickaballapura, Bangalore Rural (that is part of the constituency) and other drought-stricken areas of adjacent districts. He exposed the role of Congress, BJP and JD(S) who had earlier ridiculed the project as ‘not feasible’ but are now rushing to ‘own’ it in election-time, that too taking it up in bits and pieces. He warned that these parties will forget it once the elections are over but promised that the CPI(M) will not rest till it is implemented fully.
Com. Reddy also criticised the Congress candidate Veerappa Moily and JD(S) candidate H D Kumaraswamy both of whom were MPs and former Chief Ministers for not taking up the issues of water scarcity or the problems faced by silk farmers in parliament. He also drew attention to his controversial actions in the Reliance KG Basin gas deal and overnight environmental clearance for large number of controversial projects like POSCO.