Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has stated that he did not give in to superstitious beliefs over a crow perching on his official car a week ago.
Siddarmaiah’s statement comes a day after the media reported that he had changed his car because a crow sat on the bonnet of his vehicle last week. He claimed that the new car had been purchased because the old one had been damaged and had also completed a distance of one lakh kilometres.
A provision in the law allows the minister to buy a new car once the vehicle has run over a lakh kilometres.
“The proposal to purchase a new car is two months old, prepared much before the crow incident that occurred on June 2. We were considering Honda and Innova, also but the CM chose the Fortuner. Besides, the CM has used the old car for about 10 days after the crow sat on it. These allegations of superstition are just baseless,” said a source in CM’s office.
Sources said that new Toyota Fortuner is the same model and colour as the car from which the crow refused to budge.
The car has been registered at Koramangala regional transport office.
The news about the crow that landed on CM’s car, however funny, invoked astrological discussions in some of the media about how the incident might affect the CM’s future.