Bengaluru: Sumalatha, the wife of late actor-politician Ambareesh, contesting the Mandya Lok Sabha election on an independent ticket, has made a startling revelation.

Speaking to reporters on Thursday in Bengaluru, she said that the secretary of the state finance department, a close friend of Ambareesh, had met him at this residence, and had asked him to advise the chief minister HD Kumaraswamy not to go ahead with his farm loan waiver scheme.

She said, “The finance secretary met my husband Ambareesh at my house. He pleaded with him to prevail upon HD Kumaraswamy not to implement the farm loan waiver amounting to Rs 48,000 crore. The reason he gave was that the state treasury had gone insolvent at that point in time. Moreover, things were so bad that the government was not in a position to pay the government employees. That being the case, the secretary added that the scheme would be nothing else but a bag of lies. I was privy to the conversation then my husband and the secretary had (in 2018).”

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The Bharatiya Janata Party, which has been criticising the Kumaraswamy government for the scheme, found ample ammunition in Sumalatha’s revelation.

“From day one of the issue, we have been saying that this a financial fraud. Siddarmaiah had promised to waive off Rs 8000 crore loans. We do not know if Kumaraswamy is taking credit for it. What Sumalatha is saying makes complete sense. The negotiations with nationalised banks have not seen the light of day. The amount promised goes beyond 25% of Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP). So there has been an extraordinary amount of financial mishandling. The CM is trying to be populous. They have been talking about it for the last seven and a half months. This time, I am sure the farmers will not get fooled by these schemes,” said Shreenath Sheshadri, a BJP spokesperson.

MyNation tried calling up the JD(S) for its reactions, but none of the spokespersons were available.