From Our Special Correspondent
Daijiworld Media Network - Bengaluru
Bengaluru, Jun 7: The Siddaramaiah-led Congress government in Karnataka came under fire from the Opposition benches for the ‘Prajanya Homa’ at Mahabaleshwar and Talacauvery, the birth places of Krishna and Cauvery rivers respectively, organised by State’s Water Resources Minister M B Patil recently.
The opposition BJP, a main proponent of Hindutva, took the State Government to task for organising the homa, which it termed as "unscientific".
After Patil made a suomoto statement in the Legislative Assembly on the issue on Wednesday, for which he had spent Rs 20 lakh, opposition BJP leader Jagadish Shettar alleged that the State Government was driving people towards superstition in the age of scientific world.
The BJP leader said after Congress party came to power, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah had said time and again that he would move a bill to curb superstition and taboos which was affecting the lives of poor and gullible people of the state.
However, Siddaramaiah’s own minister had turned to superstitious practice by conducting Prajanya Homa, the BJP leader said.
The government is contemplating cloud seeding to improve rainfall while thinking of digging deep tube wells ‘Patala Gange’ to pump out water from deep down the earth to ease drinking water shortage in drought hit districts.
Instead of thinking in a rational manner, Shettar said the minister is ‘sowing seeds of superstition that defies logic.
However, Patil rebutted the former BJP Chief Minister saying that it was the BJP government headed by Shettar himself as the chief minister, which had resorted to superstitious practices.
The BJP government under Shettar had ordered special poojas in 17,000 odd temples coming under Endowment Department during 2012 to appease rain gods, after the state came under a spell of deep drought, Patil said.
The minister insisted that he had not organised a ‘homa’ but it was only a prayer made for the welfare of the people of the state.
He was responding to the feelings of six crore people of Karnataka and the BJP was trying to take political mileage out of the issue and it should be condemned.
"If the BJP does not believe in Homas or Poojas, let it say so and the people will judge for themselves,’’ he said.
The BJP government then spent around Rs 17 crore for this programme and now they say that the worship organised by was a superstitious practice. This dual stance on part of the BJP leader is disappointing, he said.
Shettar, however, said he was not opposed to people taking vows or perform homas to appease Gods when they face trouble but he was questioning the wisdom of the government which had resorted to such a practice.
Bringing the debate to the end, Health minister and senior Congress leader K R Ramesh Kumar strongly defended Patil saying that he had performed pooja in the two places of river birth and it should not be seen as a superstitious action. All the previous governments had been performing poojas in the past and BJP was no exception, he said.