The Karnataka Assembly witnessed some embarrassing moments and light-hearted banter as a power cut interrupted Chief Minister Siddarmaiah’s budget speech.
On Friday, Siddarmaiah presented his 11th budget and as he presented the budget, the power went out, and it was over five minutes before the back-up kicked in. On social media, there was some amount of ribbing at the development as Karnataka is in the grip of the worst drought the state has seen in the last four decades. Even before summer sets in, dipping water levels in reservoirs have taken a toll not just on power supply, but also, more importantly drinking water.
The power was soon restored and the proceeding went on.
Power minister, DK Shivakumar, was surely embarrassed. Reporters got a message, "Energy minister Sri DK Shivakumar has ordered for immediate suspension of engineers who are in charge of power supply to vidhan soudha on the dereliction of duty resulting in blockage of power during presentation of the annual budget by hon'ble Chief minister Sri Siddaramaiah on Friday 18th March 2016."
After the power came back on, in a rare moment of banter, Siddaramaiah jokingly asked BJP leader Jagadish Shettar if the Opposition had anything to do with it. Replying in the vein, Shettar said that the Opposition had nothing do with the outage, and that he could ask the energy minister, who was sitting right next to him.
Suvarna News reported that someone else joked that this was bound to happen when the budget was presented during ‘raahu-kaala’.
But it appears that Siddarmaiah’s patience was at the end of its tether, and he said that everyone should stop the banter and continue with the presentation of the budget.