Bengaluru: Karnataka BJP leader, Basanagouda Patil Yatnal has come down heavily on Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa for not giving any tangible assurance on including Panchamasali, a prominent sub-sect of Lingayat community into 2A category of the state’s OBC list.
Raising the issue during zero hour on Wednesday, Yatnal sought to know what tangible assurances the state government was giving to his community (Panchamasali).
“Our community leaders and seers are agitating for the last 100 days which includes 700 km of padayatra. They are sitting in protest in Freedom Park and the government has not even bothered to speak about it or neither allowed us to speak about it,” he said.
He asserted that Karnataka Chief Minister, Yediyurappa should answer this on the floor of the Assembly. “What prevents him from giving assurance to our community,” he said.
As the law and parliamentary affairs minister, Basavaraj Bommai intervened and tried to reason about how the state government had been approaching this sensitive issue.
Angry over Bommai’s intervention, Yatnal shot back, has our CM gone missing? “I do not want a reply from a minister, My community wants a reply from no less than CM himself,” he said.
While interacting with the mediapersons, Yatnal quipped that Yediyurappa had brought his community (Ganiga) and Jagadish Shettar had brought his community (Banajiga) into OBC list without following any of these norms. “These two have become CM only because our community (Panchamsali) supported the BJP to its hilt otherwise Yediyurappa would not have become CM or leader of the community. I have no personal vengeance against Yediyurappa or Shettar or anybody in this government, I am just angry that they are not keeping us on par with their community,” he said.
