BENGALURU: After pressure mounted from his party colleagues, Deputy Chief Minister D K Shivakumar, who is also the KPCC president, on Tuesday apologised for reciting a hymn of the RSS in the Karnataka Legislative Assembly. "If anyone has been hurt, I feel sorry for them. I feel I would like to seek an apology to all of them, but not because of political pressure," he said while addressing a press conference in Vidhana Soudha.
He sought apologies from the I.N.D.I.A block leaders as well, if their sentiments were hurt, but clarified that the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, did not raise the issue with him. Shivakumar had returned from Bihar after taking part in the 'voter adhikar yatra' along with Rahul Gandhi.
On August 21, Shivakumar recited the hymn in a reply to the BJP. It received widespread criticism and also triggered speculations as to whether his act was deliberate to send out a message to the party high command, as he is longing to become Karnataka's Chief Minister after the incumbent CM Siddaramaiah completes two and a half years in the office in November, 2025.
Senior leader and MLC BK Hariprasad had insisted Shivakumar to apologize for chanting the hymn as KPCC president. Shivakumar's arch rival within the party and former cooperation minister KN Rajanna had also made a scathing attack on the former over the issue.
Shivkumar defended that his act was not to praise the RSS but to pull the leg of the LoP in the Assembly, R Ashoka, that the former knew about the ideology of the RSS. "I just commented and tried to pull their leg (BJP). Some of my friends are taking a political leap out of it and trying to use it, misuse it, and create confusion among the public," he said.
As a political leader, he claimed, he had studied and realised the ideology of all the parties, including the BJP, the JD(S), communists, Muslim League and others. He further said that during the 1980s, he joined the Congress party after studying its background.
Reiterating that he will die as a Congressman, he said that the "Gandhi family is my god and I am their devotee".
He listed out the sacrifices he had made for the party and how he even went to Tihar Jail. "I had brought 100 MLAs from Maharashtra to save the Vilas Rao Deshmukh government and also done it during the RS polls in Gujarat when Ahmed Patel was the RS candidate," he said. He claimed that he had to face hundreds of false charges against him because of this.
He also claimed to have been groomed by the guidance of the AICC president Mallikarjuna Kharge.