President’s rule should be imposed in Karnataka: Hariprasad

Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai should tender resignation to the post for his failure to maintain law and order in the State and not providing impartial governance, said Leader of Opposition in Karnataka Legislative Council B.K. Hariprasad on Sunday. If Mr. Bommai fails to resign, Governor Thawar Chand Gehlot should dismiss the Bommai government and impose President’s rule, he said.s

Talking to reporters, Mr. Hariprasad said that as elections were nearing in the State, the BJP has gone back to its old practice of creating unrest. The three murders in Dakshina Kannada are part of this ploy and BJP is gaining political mileage out of these murders.

While Mr. Bommai visited the house of slain BJP Yuva Morcha activist Praveen Nettaru and gave away compensation of Rs.25 lakh before handing over the case to the National Investigation Agency, he did not do the same in relation to murders of 18-year-old Masood and 22-year-old Mohammed Fazil. Such a differentiation in action is not acceptable from Chief Minister, who has taken oath under the Constitution to govern in an impartial way.

To gloss over the government’s failure to rein in perpetrators of the murders, Mr. Bommai has decided to hand over further investigation of Praveen’s murder to the NIA. Handing over the case will not help, Mr. Hariprasad said, and referred to the absence of progress by CBI into the 2017 murder of Paresh Mesta in Uttara Kannada district.

Earlier, Mr. Hariprasad and other Congress leaders visited the house of Praveen in Nettaru village, near Bellare, and spoke to his family members. When former Bantwal MLA B. Ramanath Rai reportedly stopped Praveen’s uncle Jayaram from speaking, the family members took the Congress leaders to task. As the Congress leaders were leaving the place, some people raised slogans against Congress .