Karnataka higher education minister Dr C N Ashwath Narayan apologised on Thursday for his comment that former chief minister Siddaramaiah should be “finished off” like the 18th-century Mysuru ruler Tipu Sultan.
Amid controversy over his remark, the BJP leader expressed regret in the legislative assembly and clarified his stance in a series of tweets on Thursday.
“What I meant by using the phrase was that we should ensure the defeat of the Congress in the next election. I don’t have any personal differences with Siddaramaiah. I have only political and ideological differences. If he is hurt by my statement, I express regret,” Narayan said in a post on Twitter.
Narayan made the statement in Mandya on Monday. “Tipu’s son Siddaramaiah will come…. Do you want Tipu or Savarkar? Where should we send Tipu Sultan? What did Uri Gowda and Nanje Gowda do? In the same way, he should be finished off,” Ashwathnarayan had said.
Siddaramaiah, in the assembly on Thursday, accused Narayan of trying to “instigate” people to kill him.
In a series of tweets on Thursday, Siddaramaiah said Narayan should be immediately sacked from the cabinet and arrested.
“If no action is taken, it only means that BJP is in agreement with the appeal or they think Ashwath Narayan has become ‘Mentally Unstable’,” he tweeted.
Asking whether this had come to the notice of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah, Siddaramaiah said the BJP’s “killing culture” exposed its “intellectual bankruptcy”. “They don’t have the courage to ask votes based on their achievements & hence are trying to instigate people to assassinate me,” Siddaramaiah said.
Meanwhile, Narayan, in a series of tweets on Thursday, clarified that “the words used to compare Tipu Sultan & Siddaramaiah in Mandya are casual allusions and not malicious words. But my words are being misconstrued. It wasn’t meant to hurt anyone.”
“Debate is an integral part of politics & essential for a healthy democracy. It is in this spirit that my words should be interpreted. It may be @siddaramaiah’s culture to be calling the Prime Minister a “mass murderer” and assailing the Chief Minister,” Narayan tweeted.
“The people of the State are well aware of Siddaramaiah’s language proficiency. I was merely alluding to the fact that Congress should be defeated in this election. And, after all, our people of Mandya do not possess the brutal mentality of Tipu,” he added.
On Monday, BJP state president Nalin Kumar Kateel also asked people to chase away “those who support Tipu into the forest”. The Congress unit in Karnataka had filed a complaint against Narayan and Kateel, at Malleshwaram Police Station in Bengaluru.
