Bengaluru: Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister D K Shivakumar on Sunday said his visit to New Delhi was a routine engagement.
He said Chief Minister Siddaramaiah would speak about the Cabinet reshuffle.
Siddaramaiah on Saturday hinted that Cabinet reshuffle would happen after November when his government completes two-and-half years.
"I regularly go there (New Delhi). Whenever there is work, I go there. I will go to meet the high command, to take rest, for shopping, also for court cases," Shivakumar told reporters before leaving for the national capital.
Speaking about Bengaluru's infrastructure projects, he said, "We have to expand the metro rail network. The Centre will give only 13 to 14 per cent of the total cost of the project. The rest everything will be borne by us. Yet we are doing it. We will do our job."
On interactions with civic stakeholders, Shivakumar said, "I met Mohandas Pai and Kiran Mazumdar Shaw. I took their opinion. We cannot leave them just because they criticise us. They are part of Bengaluru. They have given some good suggestions. We have to complete them within the democratic and bureaucratic setup. They are taxpayers. We have to listen to them."
Referring to opposition to the tunnel road project, the Deputy CM remarked, "No one else but Tejasvi Surya is opposing tunnel road. He has sought a meeting with me. I have given him time for meeting. He is a public representative.
"Let him come and discuss. Criticising is not important -- let him do that -- but at the same time he should come up with solutions as well. When he says an emphatic no, then he should give a solution as well. If his suggestion is viable, then we will consider it."
Clarifying property tax and property Khatha issues in Bengaluru, Shivakumar said, "The statement on A-Khatha and B-Khatha in Bengaluru is a mere comment and not a solution. We have examined it all. The BJP government introduced the B-Khatha system.
"Now people have purchased revenue land after land use conversion but betterment charges have not been paid. So no one is giving them loans. What should I do? Should I demolish the building? These kinds of problems are there. We are not regularising properties but strengthening them."
Reacting to former Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy's charge that the government was looting the public by imposing exorbitant fees, Shivakumar retorted, "Let him take away from my pocket if we are looting."
(Except for the headline, this article has not been edited by FPJ's editorial team and auto-generated from an agency feed.)
