Bengaluru: A Vokkaliga seer triggered a row today, calling for a law to disenfranchise Muslims while speaking at a protest against notices issued by Karnataka Waqf Board. It was organised by a farmers’ outfit linked to RSS.
Chandrashekarnatha Swami of the Vishwa Vokkaliga Mahasamsthana Mutt said, “If our country has to have a good name and opinion about it, since politicians do everything for the purpose of votes… if a law can be framed so that the Muslim community do not have voting power, definitely they should do it.”
A once partner of communal harmony struggle who participated various Sadbhavna programmes, Chandrashekarnatha Swami’s present call indicates the increasing influence of communal forces on religious heads.
The protest organised by Bharatiya Kisan Sangh at Freedom Park was also attended by BJP state president BY Vijayendra and Chalawadi Narayanaswamy, leader of the Opposition in the Legislative Council, among others.
Chandrashekarnatha accused the Waqf Board of unnecessarily trying to grab land belonging to farmers. “Grabbing someone else’s property is not dharma,” he said, calling for a movement for the dissolution of the Waqf Boards in the country.
“If Muslims don’t have the right to vote, they will mind their own business and everyone can live in peace,” the seer told the gathering.
The seer is no stranger to controversy. In June, during a Kempegowda Jayanthi event organised here by the state government, he asked Chief Minister Siddaramaiah to step down and make way for Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar to head the government. Both the Congress leaders were present on the occasion.
The defeat of two sons of former two chief ministers in the recently held Assembly byelections in the state has worsened the situation on communal lines. A Vokkaliga leader and former chief minister HD Kumar Swamy’s son Nikhil lost in the Channapatna constituency considered to be Vokkaliga stronghold. Kumar Swamy himself had won from this constituency in the last Assembly elections but resigned later to contest Parliamentary elections, which he won. Now his son’s defeat with a huge margin against Yogeshwar who had shifted loyalty from BJP to Congress just before the byelections, it has acted as rubbing salt against the injury.
Likewise former chief minister and a Lingayat leader Basavarj Bommai’s son Bharat Bommai’s defeat from Shiggaon to Congress’s Yasir Khan Pathan by a margin of 13000 votes is like adding fuel to the fire. A strong hold of BJP, especially of Bommai family, since quarter century Shiggaon has gone to Congress and that too a Muslim candidate is indigestible.
