Savarkar on a bulbul, flyover & now in Assembly

NT Correspondent

Belagavi: Should Hindutva ideologue Savarkar get priority over the first PM of Independent India Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru when it comes to portraits inside the Assembly chamber at the ‘Suvarna Vidhana Soudha’ in Belagavi?

The first day of the winter session here saw the opposition Congress, staging a protest alleging that the decision to install portraits of the leaders was a unilateral decision, keeping them in the dark.

The Congress led by Leader of Opposition in the Assembly Siddaramaiah and party state president D K Shivakumar staged a demonstration outside ‘Suvarna Vidhana Soudha’ holding pictures of several national and state icons like Kuvempu, Narayana Guru, Shishunala Sharif, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Babu Jagjivan Ram among others.

“They (BJP government) are now doing it because we (Congress) will raise several issues like corruption, voter ID card scam, farmers issues, law and order, also several scams, said Siddaramaiah. In August this year, a Class 8 Kannada textbook raised eyebrows and sparked a meme-fest with a passage which claimed that Savarkar used to fly out of a locked room on the back of a bulbul bird.

And in 2020, the then CM BS Yediyurappa inaugurated a 400-metre flyover in Yelahanka named after the RSS ideologue. .