Madikeri (Karnataka) April 18 : Congress candidate for Karnataka's Mysuru-Kodagu Lok Sabha constituency, M. Lakshman, has claimed that BJP's Yaduveer Wadiyar does not hail from the royal family and "is an adopted child".

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Lakshman said: "Yaduveer does not belong to the Wadiyar royal family. What are the priorities of Yaduveer? Should he be elected just for raising his hand? Do we have to elect parliamentarians just for the sake of headcount?"

"We have fulfilled all five guarantees as promised. If our government comes to power at the Centre, we will implement 25 guarantees. Has there been any communal violence in the last 10 months in Kodagu district after the Congress government came to power?" he said, adding that during the tenure of BJP, "there was a system where communal hatred was encouraged".

Hitting out at the BJP, the Congress candidate said: "In the last general election, it was promised that the Mysuru city would be turned into Paris and Kodagu would be developed as Switzerland of India if then BJP candidate Pratap Simha is elected... Nothing was done."

/IANS