Bengaluru: Less than 24 hours after CM B.S. Yediyurappa won the trust vote in the Assembly, the new BJP government on Tuesday scrapped the official celebration of Tipu Jayanti.
This was one of the promises that the party had made during the 2018 assembly polls. It had said that if voted to power, it would scrap the celebrations within 24 hours after 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. A government order to this effect was issued on Tuesday.
In the petition, Mr Bopaiah referred to the controversial role of Tipu 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 requested the government to cancel the event.
As expected, former CM and Congress leader, Siddaramaiah who had started the celebration 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 and asserting that 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 and was a truly secular man. Describing him as a tyrant is wrong," he said.
