The Expert panel report on Lingayats was prepared without consulting the board: BJP

Bengaluru: The BJP said that the government’s choice to accord religious minority status to Lingayat-Veerashaiva community was a “pure election gimmick” and accused Chief Minister Siddaramaiah of partitioning the general public.

Speaking to the reporters at a press conference  BJP national general secretary incharge of Karnataka P Muralidhar Rao named the choice to constitute an specialist board of trustees “out of the blue” in December a year ago, on concurring minority status to Lingayat-Veerashaiva community, as “politically inspired and an election ploy.”

Rao blamed Siddaramaiah for deceiving the Veerashaiva-Lingayat community, as well as playing with their sentiments by taking a choice to prescribe religious minority status to the Center, inspite of being aware  that the Congress-drove UPA government, in 2013, had declined to consider the demand made in such manner by the Veerashaiva Mahasabha.

The BJP general secretary descended vigorously on Congress president Rahul Gandhi for not discussing the assaults on Hindus during his two-day Coastal Karnataka visit. He said Rahul Gandhi had additionally not raised the issues of suicide of thousands of farmers, murder of RSS/BJP activists and Hindus under the Congress government.

“I can portray the whole exercise as three R’s Rahul’s Repeat and Rhetoric. Rahul Gandhi has evaded every one of these issues,” Rao said. He said that the second phase of the ‘Bengaluru Rakshisi Campaign’ will start on March 26.