BJP MLA Who Asked If BBMP Is Hajj Bhavan Or Madrasa To Recruit Muslims In War Room, Now Accused Of Blocking Beds For His Supporters

In a startling revelation, BJP MLA Satish Reddy, who a couple of days ago was seen in a video asking if BBMP was a Hajj Bhavan or a Madrasa to recruit Muslims, and made allegations against officials for running a racket of allocating hospital beds to COVID patients in exchange for bribes is now accused of allotting beds to his supporters in the same case.

Satish Reddy, the BJP legislator from Bommanahalli reportedly put his agents in the BBMP war room, who in turn were booking beds for his supporters. Reddy and his agents are alleged to have issued threats to officials in the war room to prioritise his supporters over others, Vijay Karnataka newspaper reported.

The paper reported that the beds were also being sold for monetary exchange to distressed patients.

On Tuesday, Reddy accompanied by Bangalore South MP Tejasvi Surya, Basavanagudi MLA Ravi Subramanya, and Chickpet MLA Uday Garudachar held a press conference accused city municipal officials of accepting bribes to allot hospital beds. They alleged that a “nexus of BBMP officials and frontline health workers” were creating artificial scarcity and that beds were being booked under the name of asymptomatic patients who were in home isolation.

The BJP legislators also picked up on Muslims working in the BBMP COVID war room and took objections to them working there. In the video of the incident that has since gone viral, they were seen barging into a BBMP COVID war room and asking officers present if BBMP was a Hajj Bhavan or a Madrasa to recruit Muslims.

The South zone war room has 205 designates telecallers, of which only 17 were Muslims. In the video, Surya is seen asking the BBMP official what process was followed to recruit the volunteers in the COVID war room, and read out a list of 17 people, who all happened to be Muslims. Surya, Reddy, and the other BJP leaders were seen asking officials to remove the Muslim employees from the war room.

The 17 people were sacked immediately.

The Cognate got in touch with some of the sacked employees, who said that they were not given any reason why they were removed from their jobs.

On his part, Reddy has denied involvement in the scandal and said that the accusations against him has no substance.

Reddy, an MLA from Bengaluru’s Bommanahalli constituency from 2008, was accused of molestation by a woman in 2015. The victim had accused Reddy of molesting her and her sister during the management committee election of the Reddy Jana Sangha (RJS).