Huballi/Bengaluru: Stung by the Congress accusation that he had refused to eat food cooked by Dalits on his visit to Dalit colonies in Tumakuru and Chitradurga districts, State BJP president B.S.Yeddyurappa clarified on Monday that the Dalit family had prepared limited food for his partymen and was forced to buy more from a hotel to serve the others who arrived later.
“The Congress is not able to tolerate the fact that we Bharatiya Janata Party leaders are listening to the troubles of Dalits and eating with them in their homes,” he said while breakfasting in a slum in Bagalkot on Monday.
Also, claiming that attacks on Dalits had increased in the native villages of Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and senior Congress leader, Mallikarjun Kharge, he alleged that more of them were being killed in the state after the Congress came to power.
“The Congress has no moral right to talk about Dalits when it had humiliated Dr. B.R. Ambedkar and refused to cremate him in Delhi after his death. His body had to be taken to Mumbai as a result. The BJP will expose the double standards of the Congress and its history of humiliating Dalits,” he warned.
Meanwhile, calling the Congress allegation “ cheap and nasty,” and part of its strategy to malign the BJP, party spokesman, Suresh Kumar too insisted that Mr. Yeddyurappa and other BJP leaders had breakfast prepared by Dalit families in Tumakuru and Chitradurga during their recent visit to the Dalit colonies. “The Congress has no moral right to speak about Dalits after having used them as a votebank for over seven decades,” he said disparagingly.
Backing the Bharatiya Janata Party’s claims, Mr Hanumantharayappa, who hosted the breakfast for Mr Yeddyurappa and other BJP leaders in Tumakuru, explained they had prepared enough to feed 30 people, but had to buy breakfast from outside to serve the 300 more who arrived.
“But the 30 Bharatiya Janata Party leaders were served the food we made,” he said, adding, “It is not necessary for me to defend BJP leaders, but this is what happened.”
Recounted another Dalit man from Chitradurga, “When we heard that Mr. Yeddyurappa had come to our house, we were thrilled and prepared breakfast for him. But after more people arrived, we brought breakfast from outside to serve them.”
Maintaining that he was not affiliated to any party or interested in getting involved in these “silly issues”, he said it was quite unnecessary to blow such incidents out of proportion.
