Congress leader and former Education Minister B.K. Chandrashekar has taken serious exception to the former Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy’s statement that the CID probe into the KPSC recruitment scam was targeted at one particular community.
300 favoured
Addressing presspersons at the Congress office here, Mr. Chandrashekar said: “The CID report clearly says that the then KPSC chairperson H.N. Krishna favoured 300 people from a particular community. The report has pointed out how Mr. Krishna has meted out injustice to deserving candidates from minority and backward classes.”
Condemning Mr. Kumaraswamy’s remark questioning the honesty of CID officials who investigated the scam, Mr. Chandrashekar said: “This is unfair. If he thinks that some official is dishonest, let him name the official. Making such statements is unbecoming of his stature.”
Condemned
Mr. Chandrashekar also condemned the comments and reactions by people from various quarters to Jnanpith award winner U.R. Ananthamurthy’s critical remarks on the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi. “What wrong has Prof. Ananthamurthy done? It has become fashionable for people to make personal comments against anything and everything. The Congress is in support of the writer,” he said.
“A few months ago, Nobel laureate Amartya Sen’s statement against Mr. Modi was also hyped up by the media and the BJP Rajya Sabha MP and proprietor-editor-in-chief of ‘The Pioneer’ newspaper Chandan Mitra had demanded that Mr. Sen be stripped of his Bharat Ratna,” he said, appealing to the media to refrain from sensationalising every statement made against Mr. Modi.
Advice to media
He released a joint statement, signed by freedom fighter H.S. Doreswamy, Jnanpith award winner Girish Karnad, Dalit ativist Mavalli Shankar and others, including G.K. Govind Rao, K. Marulasiddappa, Indudhara Honnapura, Lakshminarayan Nagawara and S.G. Siddaramaiah, appealing to the media to use restraint while reporting. The statement adds that “self-regulation” by the media is preferable to regulation through law.
