Kalaburagi: Faced with strong opposition from the BJP and some pro-Kannada organisations, the district administration has called off the Bahamani Utsav it had planned to hold on March 6.
District in- charge Minister, Dr Sharanprakash Patil, who was the chief architect of the utsav, is believed to have informed its organising committee that the government would not like to be associated with the event in the wake of the opposition from some organisations, including the BJP. “We will support the utsav as and when it is held. But the government cannot be involved in it”, Dr Patil is understood to have told the organisers.
With elections to the state Assembly round the corner, the ruling Congress did not want to give the saffron party any “communal issue” to exploit, according to sources. They revealed that Chief Minister Siddaramaiah was unhappy with the decision to organise the utsav without taking the political ramifications into account.
Convener of the organising committee, Lakshman Dasti ,when contacted, however, said the event had not been called off, but put off to August 3. The decision was taken at a meeting held by the Anjuman Tarakki Urdu here on Saturday. It was chaired by its president, Amjad Javed and attended by academicians, Dr Nazrul Bari and Dr Rab.
“The Bahamani Utsav has been held for the last seven to eight years by a private organisation in Kalaburagi. Only this year the district administration decided to provide us some funds for it. But unfortunately due to the opposition the administration has decided to distance itself from the event. Dr Patil spoke to us and conveyed the decision. But we will go ahead and organise it in August as going by historians the Bahamani kingdom was established that month,” Mr Dasti said.
