Karnataka BJP president B.Y. Vijayendra during a meeting with Dharmadhikari of Shri Kshetra Dharmasthala D. Veerendra Heggade, at Dharmasthala in Dakshina Kannada district, on September 1, 2025.
Launching a scathing attack on the Congress, Union Minister Prahlad Joshi alleged that the campaign against Dharmasthala Manjunatheswara temple and its administrators is ‘part of the Congress conspiracy against the majority’.
Speaking at the ‘Dharmasthala chalo’ programme in the temple town on September 1, the Union Minister for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution and New and Renewable Energy called the ‘musukudhari’, the complainant in the Dharmasthala case who has been arrested by the Special Investigation Team (SIT), a ‘friend of the Congress’.
The BJP had organised the ‘Dharmasthala chalo’ rally to seek NIA or CBI inquiry into what the party called a ‘larger conspiracy’ against the temple and its managers using the SIT probe into the alleged burial of bodies in Dharmasthala village between 1995 and 2014.
Mr. Joshi alleged that appeasement of the minority is in the blood of the Congress. The Congress even tried to pick holes in ‘Operation Sindoor’ against Pakistan-backed terrorists. Former Home Minister P. Chidambaram even asked for proof to confirm that the terrorists were from Pakistan. “When terrorists attacked Mumbai in 2008, the Congress tried to project it as an attack by some Hindus, to appease minorities,” he alleged.
Referring to the State Government allowing the SIT to dig near the Bahubali Betta in Dharmasthala to search for bodies during its on-going investigation, Mr. Joshi asked whether the government would have shown the courage to allow digging near the places of worship of any other religions in such situations.
Calling the Congress government in Karnartaka as ‘ultra leftist’, Mr. Joshi criticised Deputy Chief Minister D. K. Shivakumar for terming the Chamundi Hills in Mysuru as not the property of Hindus alone.
The Union Minister said that the government allowed a smear campaign against Dharmasthala temple and on the conduct of its religious leaders as it is unable to tolerate the growth of Hindutva in the coastal region. “The Congress was not able to grow in the belt during the last four decades,” he said.
President of Karnataka unit of BJP B. Y. Vijayendra cautioned the State Government against taking the ‘Dharmasthala chalo’ programme lightly. A probe by either the NIA or CBI could expose the conspiracy behind targetting the Dharmasthala temple. He questioned the government constituting the SIT even before conducting a thorough inquiry of the complainant.
Leader of Opposition R. Ashok said that ‘urban Naxals’ (or Maoists) are behind the conspiracy to defame Dharmasthala. The NIA or CBI probe is required as the link to the case extends beyond Karnataka to Kerala and Tamil Nadu and abroad, he alleged.
“Chief Minister Siddaramaiah is surrounded by a Naxal gang,” he alleged.
A large number of people from different parts of Karnataka attended the rally.
Published – September 01, 2025 04:41 pm IST
