Airport: Another PM, another ceremony

Airport: Another PM, another ceremony

Chief Minister Dharam Singh said that the coalition government which has just entered its ninth month is stable.

Deccan Herald

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will perform the ground breaking ceremony for the Bangalore International Airport on February 11 at 4 pm, Chief Minister Dharam Singh told the Legislative Council on Friday.

Replying to the Council’s discussion on the Governor’s address, the Chief Minister said that it was his coalition government that signed the land-lease agreement on BIAL and so a ground breaking ceremony was only apt.

Though not putting it in so many words, the chief minister made it clear that it cannot be vice-versa.

It may be noted that earlier, during the legislature session, the members of the Opposition BJP and the Kannada Chaluvali Vatal Paksha had said that since the chief minister and the prime minister of the previous governments had already performed a similar ceremony, going through it again would be an insult to the latter duo.

Mr Dharam Singh noted that his government which has just stepped on to the ninth month was a stable government and the two coalition partners (Congress and JD-S) were working on their ‘temperamental adjustments’.

Mr A K Anthony, the AICC general secretary in-charge of Karnataka who was in the Bangalore recently was himself an expert in coalition governance - all his three terms as chief minister of Kerala were coalition governments, Mr Dharam Singh noted and merely said ‘he has heard us’ while he was here.

PM’s itinerary
Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh will arrive in Bangalore on February 11 on a two-day official visit. According to his tour programme released on Saturday, the Prime Minister, on arrival, will proceed to Devanahalli for the function of the Bangalore International Airport Limited.

On February 12, Dr Manmohan Singh will leave for Mysore in the forenoon to participate in two functions - one by Suttur Math and another by Infosys.