Mysuru: Former Chief Minister Siddaramaiah called senior Congress leader and MLA, Roshan Baig, "power hungry" in response to his recent diatribe against him.
"He is speaking this way as he was not made minister or given a ticket for the Lok Sabha poll. Action has been initiated against him," he said.
Mr Siddaramaiah , who was speaking to reporters here, said he was afraid of the EVMs being tampered with these Lok Sabha elections. "Since an EVM uses software, it can be tampered with. We get results in our favour in by- elections, but why not in general elections? The BJP doesn't indulge in tampering with EVMs in by -elections, but it could do this in the Lok Sabha elections, " he charged.
Later, inaugurating the Nrupathunga Kannada Science and Commerce College at Ramakrishnanagar, here , he objected to the state government's proposal to introduce English medium in government schools, and said he would speak to the Chief Minister about it.
"I am not against learning English as a language, but I would like the medium of education to be Kannada. If we study in English medium schools, we learn to speak English fluently but it does not become the language of one's heart," he argued. In his view, Kannada schools were closing down due to a lower standard of education rather than their medium of instruction.
Claiming that he was often misunderstood, he said, "I am from a village, my words may be rough but not my heart. People call me, egoistic, but I have never behaved that way. They call me anti-Lingayat, but it was representatives of the Viraktha parampare who asked for an independent Lingayat religion and representatives of the Guru Parampare, who sought a Veerashaiva Lingayat religion. Based on that we took a cabinet decision and sent the proposal to the Centre, that's it."
