Want to do 2-4 'village stays' every month: Karnataka CM Kumaraswamy

Karnataka Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy on Friday revived his 2006 rural outreach programme, in which he stayed at the homes of villagers.

Kicking off the programme today, the chief minister said he wanted to start two to four programmes on 'Grama Vaastavya' or the village stay tour every month.

"It (village stay tour) will start from today onwards. I wanted to do a minimum two to four 'Grama Vaastavya' (village stay programme) every month," he told ANI here.

The JD(S) leader had during his first stint as chief minister of the state in 2006 had stayed in the homes of villagers.

Under the village stay programme, Kumaraswamy will stay in a hamlet overnight where he will interact with its people on the issues they face regularly.

On Thursday evening, Kumaraswamy had boarded a train from Bengaluru to Kalaburagi for his rural outreach initiative.

Meanwhile, the JD(S) today in a tweet hit out at criticism of its leader's initiative by the BJP.

"CM's #GramaVastavya has helped a lot of villages. Unlike @BSYBJP, @hd_kumaraswamy prefers to eat homemade food and not parcelled food from hotel & CM is travelling in a train!

Btw, Charity begins at home. How many countries did @narendramodi visit in the last 5 yrs?," JD(S) said in a tweet.

It was responding to BJP Karnataka's tweet, which said: " The amount of money spent on @hd_kumaraswamy village trip that includes his luxury food, stay, travel, cultural programs & advertisements could have been spent for the development of that village. Huge amount of Tax payers money is spent on image make over of Kumaraswamy.