BSY indulged in revenge politics: DK Shivakumar

Team Udayavani, Oct 31, 2019, 3:38 PM IST

Bengaluru: Former Minister DK Shivakumar on Thursday slamming Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa said that the latter is indulging in revenge politics.

Addressing presspersons at KPCC office on the occasion of Indira Gandhi’s death anniversary celebration he said, “BS Yediyurappa indulging in revenge politics. Our Government had sanctioned medical college for Kanakapura and the present government must build the college there itself.”

During the 2018-19 budget, the Congress-JD(S) coalition government had announced the construction of a medical college in Kanakapura. At the time, DK Shivakumar held the Medical Education and Water Resources portfolios. Shivakumar claimed that the then Chief Minister Kumaraswamy had also given the go-ahead for the project and was supposed to lay the foundation stone for the construction of the medical college in July this year.

However, after the political turmoil that led to the collapse of the Congress-JD(S) coalition government in July, the new BJP government decided to shift the proposed medical college from Kanakapura to Chikkaballapura, which was the constituency of disqualified Congress MLA Dr K Sudhakar.

DK Shivakumar further added, “The BJP government is trying to stop Tipu Jayanthi and drop his lessons from textbooks. President Ramnath Kovind had praised Tipu Sulthan why are state BJP leaders spreading hatred about such leader.”

BS Yediyurappa on October 30 indicated that his government’s plans to remove the lesson on Tipu Sultan from middle school history textbooks and said he does not believe the controversial 18th-century ruler of erstwhile Mysore kingdom was a freedom fighter.

“Tipu – we are going to drop everything and even in the textbook also (lesson regarding him) appeared that also we are thinking to cancel,” he told reporters here in response to a question, days after BJP MLA Appachu Rajan demanded the removal of the lesson saying it carried “wrong information”.

Yediyurappa said he does not believe Tipu Sultan was a freedom fighter. “….we will look into it, we will examine it (demand for removing the lesson from the textbook),” he added.

The move was slammed by opposition Congress which said removing the lesson was like “distorting history”.

State Primary and Secondary Education MinisterSuresh Kumar had on Monday asked officials to look into the demand by Ranjan and sought a report in three days.

The Minister in a note has asked the Managing Director of Karnataka Textbook Society to call a meeting of history textbook drafting committee and to invite the MLA to discuss the need for the lesson.