Congress leader Siddaramaiah urges CM Bommai to sack education minister Narayan

Congress leader and former Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Thursday urged Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai to immediately sack state higher education minister CN Aswath Narayan.

The plea came in the wake of Narayan, in Mandya on Wednesday, asking people to finish off the former chief minister, creating an uproar in the Assembly on Thursday.

"Do you want Tipu (Sultan) or (Hindutva ideologue VD) Savarkar? Where should we send this Tipu Sultan? What did Nanje Gowda do? You should finish him (Siddaramaiah) off the same way," Narayan said at a public gathering in Mandya.

'Narayan has appealed to people to kill me'

Siddaramaiah accused Narayan of trying to "instigate" people to kill him. “Higher education minister Ashwath Narayan has appealed to people to kill me the way Tipu was killed. Ashwath Narayan, why are you trying to instigate people? Get the gun yourself," the Congress leader said on Thursday.

No action had been taken against the minister and this showed that Bommai, home minister Araga Jnanendra, and their "incompetent cabinet is sleeping and is in agreement with Ashwath Narayan", the former chief minister said in a series of tweets.

"Has the Gujarat BJP culture crept into the Karnataka BJP as well? Will Prime Minister Narendra Modi remain silent even now, just as he was in 2002. Kannadigas will never let Karnataka become like Gujarat," Siddaramaiah wrote.

Congress lodge complaint against Narayan

The Congress unit in Karnataka filed a police complaint against Narayan and BJP president Nalin Kumar Kateel, who had said that those who revere Tipu Sultan should be "driven out" of Karnataka. Another case was filed by the Siddaramaiah Fan's Association Hubballi.

Narayan later said that his statement was being misinterpreted and he claimed that by "finishing off" he meant defeating the former chief minister electorally and not causing any physical harm.

"I had compared Siddaramaiah to Tipu Sultan. I even spoke about Siddaramaiah's love towards Tipu Sultan. I didn't speak anything disgracefully against Siddaramaiah... I had criticised the glorification of a person responsible for genocide and forceful conversion in the state," he said.

"In spoken language, I meant to say that we have to defeat the Congress. I don't have any differences with Siddaramaiah personally. I have political and ideological differences with him. I don't have any disrespect for him. If any of my statements have hurt his feelings, I regret my statement," he said.

Siddaramaiah rubbishes Narayan's clarification

Siddaramaiah, however, rejected the clarification. "Narayan has no business to continue as a minister. I request the Governor to dismiss him from the cabinet," he said in Hubballi.

Narayan countered by saying that it is part of Siddaramaiah's culture to call Prime Minister Narendra Modi a 'mass murder' and that the people of Mandya do not "possess the brutal mentality of Tipu".