The Karnataka High Court (HC) on Wednesday (6 November) asked the state’s B S Yediyurappa government to reconsider its decision to not celebrate Tipu Jayanti, the birthday of the Islamic Ruler Tipu Sultan, OpIndia reported.

However, according to The Hindu, it also refused to stay the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government’s order to stop celebrating Tipu Jayanti as an state event. The government had taken the decision to end celebrating Tipu Jayanti, started by the Congress’s Siddaramaiah government when it was in power.

The BJP government’s decision was challenged in the Court through a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by Bilal Ali, a resident of Lucknow, Tipu National Service Association, and Tipu Sultan United Forum.

During the hearing of the PIL, the government had made it clear to the Court that it would not bar any individual from celebrating Tipu Jayanti but it would not celebrate it as a state event as the previous Congress governments did. Responding to this, the bench, led by Chief Justice of Karnataka High Court A S Oka, asked the government to reconsider the decision, giving it a time of two months to take a call keeping ‘all aspects’ in mind.

The Court then adjourned the case until January, 2020

Yesterday (5 November), the HC had sought the reason behind the decision from the government.

The PIL had also claimed that the decision by the BJP government was in a violation of the Article 14 and 15 of the Indian Constitution.

To the interest of many, the Karnataka HC in 2016 had raised questions over the decision of the then Congress government to celebrate Tipu Jayanti. The bench, headed by the then chief justice of the HC Subhro Kamal Mukherjee, had observed that Tipu was not a freedom fighter but a monarch.

“What is the logic behind celebrating Tipu Jayanti? Tipu was not a freedom fighter, but a monarch who fought the opponents to safeguard his interests,” Justice Subhro Kamal Mukherjee, presiding over the division bench, had observed.