BENGALURU: “Power politics is a temptation to which I submitted. If I had not become a politician, I would have become a revolutionary and I still have regrets about this,” said Congress leader M Veerappa Moily on Saturday. The former Chief Minister and Union minister was speaking after the release of his autobiography ‘Nanna Bogaseya Aakasha’ (My handful of sky) at the Raveendra Kalakshetra here.
The 80-year-old listed his contributions to the state as chief minister, especially the Common Entrance Test (CET) for professional courses. “It is because of the suicide of a medical student, who could not afford the cost of the course, that the CET was conceptualised. When I visited Silicon Valley some years later, I happened to meet a peon’s daughter from a Raichur village who turned out to be a noted doctor in the region,” he said.
Moily expressed gratitude to the people of Karnataka for helping him become chief minister. He said he felt indebted to his mother Poovamma and his wife Malathi who shaped his career. Noted writer C N Ramachandran said the CET was one of the best contributions of Moily. “In his autobiography, he was honest to the core.
He raised certain issues of successive governments at the Centre scrapping all the projects he had conceived as Union minister, including the setting up of the National Judicial Services Commission on the lines of the UPSC. Given the time and the cost involved, the governments scrapping them should be stopped by a law,” Ramachandran quoted Moily from the book.
Former deputy chief minister Dr G Parameshwara said, “There may be many writers in the Kannada literary world, but Moily stands apart with his modern thinking. His concern for the downtrodden is reflected in his autobiography.”