Shettar to visit ‘jinxed’ town after session?

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Tired of being ignored because of the tag Chamarajnagar has earned of being jinxed, religious heads, political leaders, pro-people organizations and farmers came together on Monday to take out a padayatra, while appealing to new Chief Minister Jagadish Shettar to break the 21-year-old jinx.

It remains to be seen if Mr Shettar—who has hardly nine months left of his tenure—will take the risk and visit the most backward district in the state.

Over 2,000 people participated in the padayatra, which culminated at Dr Ambedkar Bhavan where a massive public meeting was addressed by Sri Shivamurthy Murugarajendra Sharanaru of Chitradurga Math. The pontiff said that he had already spoken to Mr Shettar and invited him to Chamarajanagar.

“The CM has promised to visit Chamarajanagar after the assembly session. I am confident he will keep his promise. It’s not correct on the part of politicians to be superstitious and attribute their exit from power to a visit to Chamarjanagar. Earlier CMs lost power due to their wrongdoings”.

The reason for Chamarajanagar being considered jinxed is that all CMs who have visited the town have lost power soon after their trip. The jinx can be traced back to Devaraj Urs’ last days as CM. Back in 1980 after parting ways with Indira Gandhi, Urs had visited Chamarajanagar. Days after the visit, his government was toppled by Gundu Rao, who met the same fate seven months after he visited Chamarajanagar in 1982.

Ramakrishna Hegde had to bow out of office after a visit to Chamarajanagar.

The seven CMs who followed Veerendra Patil – S. Bangarappa, Veerappa Moily, Deve Gowda, J.H. Patel, S.M. Krishna, Dharam Singh and Yeddyurappa have studiously avoided visiting Chamarajnagar. So much so that J.H. Patel, whose government granted Chamarajanagar district status, performed the inauguration from MM Hills!