Mangaluru, Jul 14: Veteran Congress leader B Janardhana Poojary on Thursday blamed Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah of tarnishing the party’s image and demanded his resignation.

“Let the legislation and the High Command decide the next chief ministerial candidate. There are many able leaders such as D K Shivakumar, G Parameshwara, Mallikarjun Kharge, V S Ugrappa, S R Patil and H Vishwanath,” he said.

Addressing media persons in the city, the former union minister and aide of former prime minister Indira Gandhi said that no one is greater than the party. He said he is seeking the chief minister’s resignation to save the party.“Siddaramaiah has been the chief minister for the last three years. Let others become the chief minister. If the chief minister can remove people like Vinay Kumar Sorake from the Cabinet on the basis of completion of three years, why don’t the same rule can be applied to himself?” Poojary questioned.

Speaking on the recent suicide case of DySP Ganapathi,  he said that the government is hesitating to file an FIR even though DySP M K Ganapathi, in his statement, has named minister K J George and two other senior police officials. He said the judicial probe should be conducted by the sitting judge of the Supreme Court and not a retired judge in this case.

He charged that the statement should be considered as a dying declaration. Being a lawyer, Chief Minister Siddaramaih should have known about registering an FIR. Why is the CM protecting K J George, he asked.He took the government to task for not taking the statement of Ganapathi’s wife Pavana.