Mangaluru: Former leader of the opposition in the Karnataka legislative council VS Ugrappa demanded the resignation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union home minister Amit Shah and Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath over the Ayodhya temple donation embezzlement scam.He told media persons on Saturday that the RSS, the BJP, and the VHP politicised and looted in the name of Rama in this country. “The RSS has been collecting Guru Dakshina since it started in 1925. We don’t know how much has been collected in that, because it is neither registered nor accounted for, nor audited. If you are looting in Rama’s temple, how much has been looted as the RSS’s Guru Dakshina? Perhaps both need to be investigated under the supervision of a sitting Supreme Court judge and subjected to a CBI inquiry,” he demanded.He said that the Sri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust collected thousands of crores from 1990 onwards. “You are the ones looting the property of Sri Ramachandra in the Ram temple. Are you patriots? Are you the ones who follow Rama’s true ideals? Can Narendra Modi ever live up to the ideals of Lord Rama? If there was a little respect for Lord Rama, by now the PM, the home minister, and the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh should have taken moral responsibility and resigned,” he added.Ugrappa also urged the Union govt to include the Karnataka Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Reservation of seats in Educational Institutions and of Appointments or posts in the services under the State) Act 2022 in the Ninth Schedule of the Constitution.He said that it is necessary to safeguard the interests of over 4.5 crore people in the state. The SCs account for nearly 17% of Karnataka’s population (around 1.25 crore people), STs constitute about 7% (50 lakh), while OBCs make up around 42% (2.9 crore). The Act increased SC reservation from 15% to 17% and ST reservation from 3% to 7%, he said, recalling the Basavaraj Bommai-led BJP govt writing to the Centre in March 2023 and later former CM Siddaramaiah seeking inclusion of the Act in the Ninth Schedule. The Centre’s failure has left the law vulnerable, he said.“Chief minister DK Shivakumar should lead an all-party delegation to New Delhi to press the Centre for inclusion of the Act in the Ninth Schedule. The state govt should move the high court for vacating the interim stay on the implementation of the enhanced reservation provisions. The state govt had announced that it would recruit for 72,000 vacant posts. The number of posts reserved for STs will decrease by 2,888; for SCs, the number of posts will decrease by 1,444. Meanwhile, for the SC-A group, 541 posts will decrease, and for the SC-B group, 541 posts will decrease, he added.
