Datta Peeta issue: Cabinet accepts sub-committee report

Karnataka Law Minister J C Madhuswamy on Friday said the Cabinet approved Friday a report on religious practices at the controversial cave shrine (Datta Peeta) of Bababudangiri in Chikkamagaluru district.

Declining to reveal details, Madhuswamy said the report will be submitted to the High Court.

“The decision of the High Court was that the government has to come out with some report. We had sought time. Now, the report has been finalised and the Cabinet has accepted the recommendations,” Madhuswamy said.

A Dattatreya temple and a dargah named after 16th century Sufi saint Baba Budan are located atop the hills, eponymously named Bababudangiri. For years, the site has been shrouded under dispute between Hindus and Muslims over worshipping rights. The controversy came to be known as the Babri of the south.

According to lore, Baba Budan is said to have introduced coffee to India. Apparently, he planted coffee seeds that he brought from Yemen in these hills.

The Cabinet had constituted a sub-committee under Madhuswamy after the High Court, in September 2021, asked the government to reconsider the matter afresh.

In March 2018, the then Congress government had issued an order appointing Syed Ghouse Mohiyuddin Shah Khadri, a Muslim cleric, to conduct rituals at the disputed religious site. When this order was quashed by the High Court in September 2021, based on a challenge by the Sri Guru Dattatreya Peeta Devasthana, the ruling BJP welcomed it.

The Cabinet sub-committee’s report will be significant in the backdrop of the 2023 Assembly elections.

BJP national general secretary C T Ravi, one of the spearheads of the Datta Peeta movement, welcomed the Cabinet sub-committee report. "That a Hindu priest should be appointed at the shrine was a long-pending demand, which has been finally fulfilled. Even Islam wouldn't accept a Muslim priest at a Hindu shrine," he told DH.