KPCC chief backs Cooker bomber kicks off major row

Bengaluru: The Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee president DK Shivakumar's statement on calling Shariq the cooker bomber of Mangaluru as a terrorist was hasty and unsubstantiated, has come in for severe criticism, not just from the BJP but also put his own party leadership into a quandary of damage control. The party president Mallikarjun Kharge had met his close aides in the AICC to tide over the situation. He and the national general secretary of the party KC Venugopal are in the grip of the situation.

Shivkumar made this statement on Thursday in Bengaluru. "How can you call anybody a terrorist just because a bomb had blown? It was too premature to give that tag to Shariq who was a passenger in the autorickshaw, the probe is still on and how can we give the terrorist tag to somebody even before the investigation had been completed"? He had asked.

Following this statement on Thursday, the Congress party went into a tizzy, not knowing what to do, though the social media handlers of the party tried to do some damage control through their weak posts, after a few hours they also shut shop on this issue. But Shivakumar's statement had already set a wildfire in the national media and even the TV channels that support Congress did not dare open a debate on this issue. But the channels inimical to the Congress did not spare any effort to put that on the primetime slot. The panellists arguing on behalf of Shivakumar found themselves in a corner.

But on Friday, something clicked inside the Congress ecosystem as Shivakumar tried to defend himself but it turned out to be another fiasco as he did not apologise, the meek statements he gave to the press and media aggravated the situation and his meek and knee-jerk replies to the media's volley of questions buried him deep into the controversy.

"In his enthusiasm to protect his vote bank, Shivakumar has supported a terrorist who tried to bomb Mangaluru on that fateful day of 19 November. Why did the Cooker blow up, why did Shariq share the videos glorifying Islamic State? Why did the DGP and intelligence see the reason for an act of terror behind the cooker blast? Retorted state BJP chief Nalin Kumar Kateel. The media narratives and campaigns will sustain BJP's election machinery to run this in its campaign mill at least for the next few weeks in one or the other form and rake it up again closer to the Karnataka elections in 2023.

However, Congress's inner circles are not in the mood to wait for that eventuality and it is expected that the 'High Command' of the party makes some kind of via-media adjustments to mitigate the effects created by the statement of its Karnataka chief.