Bengaluru: Less than 24 hours after Karnataka chief minister B.S. Yediyurappa won the trust vote in the state Assembly, the new BJP government on Tuesday scrapped the official celebrations of Tipu Jayanti.
This was one of the promises that the party had made during the 2018 Assembly election campaign. It had said that if voted to power, it would scrap the celebrations within 24 hours of assuming power. There are many in the saffron camp who describe the erstwhile Mysore ruler as a tyrant who destroyed Hindu temples and forced tens of thousands to convert to Islam.
On Monday, Madikeri BJP MLA K.G. Bopaiah petitioned the CM on the subject and in the evening, the Cabinet met and took a decision in this regard. A government order to this effect was issued Tuesday.
In the petition, Mr Bopaiah referred to the controversial role of Tipu Sultan in history and explained in detail how the celebration of Tipu Jayanti had led to major law and order problems, especially in Kodagu in 2015. Tipu Jayanti is celebrated in November every year and is a major cause of tension in the state, he said, and requ-ested the new government to cancel the event.
As expected, former CM and Congress leader Siddaramaiah, who had started the celebrations in 2015, strongly condemned the government decision. He said the scrapping of the celebration was nothing but a crime and also came out with a series of tweets attaching the pictures of B.S. Yediyurappa participating in a Tipu Jayanti event, and asserting this clearly showed the double standards of the CM.
“To please the RSS, he has taken this decision which is not acceptable. Tipu was the first freedom fighter... Describing him as a tyrant is wrong,” he said.
