Elephantine request stumps Karnataka CM

Hundreds of people with requests ranging from houses to jobs and residential sites to transfers line up outside Karnataka Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy’s official residence in Bangalore during the weekly Janata Darshan programme. But, on Saturday, two elderly citizens of Bangalore stumped Kumaraswamy with an elephantine request.

The citizens hailing from the City waited in the long queue for their turn to request the Chief Minister to gift an elephant to the Doddaganapathi Temple in Basavangudi in Bangalore. Kumaraswamy, who was visibly taken aback by the rare request, took some time to respond.

But, soon it dawned on the Chief Minister that his father’s ten-year-old unfulfilled promise had come to haunt him. The elderly citizens brought to Kumaraswamy’s notice that his father and former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda had promised to gift an elephant to the Temple during the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections in 1996.

“Though Deve Gowda won the elections, his promise remains unfulfilled. We have been waiting for the last ten years, hoping the former Prime Minister would fulfill his promise”, the citizens told the Chief Minister.

Though the request for an elephant would well be a rare one, Kumaraswamy, who is also as religious a person as his father, promised the elderly citizens that he would try to do the needful.