No proposal to remove Savarkar portrait yet: Speaker

Bengaluru, NT Bureau: Speaker of the Assembly UT Khader clarified that he hadn’t received any proposal to remove the portrait of Hindutva ideologue VD Savarkar from the Suvarna Vidhana Soudha building in Belagavi. He made the comments to mediapersons at the Suvarna Vidhana Soudha in Belagavi on Thursday.

“If I receive a proposal, then I’ll take a call. I can’t decide right now. I’ll go by the constitution. To me, ministers and the Opposition are the same,” Khader said.

Meanwhile, Minister for Rural Development and Panchayat Raj (RDPR) and Information Technology and Bio-Technology (IT-BT) challenged the BJP by alluding to the fact that Savarkar had written mercy petitions to the British when he was imprisoned and had dutifully served the colonial rulers by helping recruit Indian soldiers to fight Subhash Chandra Bose’s Azad Hind Fauj.