Basanagouda Patil Yatnal challenges Shivanand Patil and Vijayanand Kashappanavar to resign from Karnataka Assembly, face him in by-polls

Minister for Textiles, Sugar, Sugarcane Development and Agricultural Marketing Shivanand S. Patil, the MLA from Basavana Bagewadi, submitted his resignation to the Speak U.T. Khader on May 2. Mr. Kashappanavar, the MLA from Hungund, is yet to respond to the challenge.

Basanagouda Patil Yatnal had challenged Minister Shivanand Patil and Congress MLA Vijayanand Kashappanavar to resign from the Karnataka Assembly and face him in by-polls. He vowed to contest against them and defeat them.

“If they do not resign by next Friday (May 9), I would doubt their parentage,” he said in Vijayapura on April 30. “They need not come to Vijayapura city to fight me. Let us all contest as independents. I will defeat them in their home turf,” he told reporters after Basava Jayanti celebrations in Vijayapura.

Minister for Textiles, Sugar, Sugarcane Development and Agricultural Marketing Shivanand S. Patil, the MLA from Basavana Bagewadi, submitted his resignation to the Speak U.T. Khader on May 2.

Mr. Kashappanavar, the MLA from Hungund, is yet to respond to the challenge.

Mr. Yatnal claimed that, unlike him, Mr. Patil and Mr. Kashappanavar are not mass leaders. He claimed to have won elections based on his charisma, and not party affiliation. “The same cannot be said about the two Congress leaders who would be easily defeated if they sought re-election,” he said.

Mr Yatnal called them anti-Hindutva and being engaged in Muslim appeasement.

He alleged that Shivanand Patil’s original name was Shivanand Hachadad, and that the Minister had changed his surname to gain respectability. He said Mr. Shivanand Patil would be defeated by Hindu voters who are upset with him for joining a rally by Muslims in Vijayapura recently.