Congress leader and Karnataka minister Priyank Kharge on Thursday claimed to have received a “death threat” from “manuvadis” saying that the dalits must not indulge in politics. He said that the letter explicitly stated that Kharge would remain a dalit even if he is an MLA or a minister.

“Recently, received another love letter from Manuvaadis asking me to lay low and not speak up as I am a Dalit. The letter explicitly says that I might become an MLA or a Minister, but I am and will always remain a Dalit. The letter, besides abusing my family, also states that they won’t hesitate to have me killed in an “encounter” by their people,” the minister said in a post on X (formerly Twitter).

Kharge further claimed that the letter not only threatened to “encounter” him but also contained derogatory remarks on his Dalit background.

The Congress leader further stated about taking the help of the police in this incident. “A complaint has been filed in the Vidhana Soudha police station regarding this,” he added.

Kharge, however, alleged the BJP’s involvement in sending a threat letter, saying that earlier the BJP gave a ticket to “a goon who threatened to wipe out his family” in the 2023 Karnataka Assembly elections. He has also asked the Kalaburagi MP Umesh Jadhav to take congnisance of the matter and address it promptly.

“In the more recent, Karnataka assembly elections, BJP rewarded a goon who threatened to wipe out my family with an assembly ticket. Currently, he is absconding,” Kharge added in its post.

In the Karnataka assembly elections held last year, the grand old party got a landslide victory winning 135 out of the 224 seats defeating BJP and JDS.

The southern state, which has 28 Lok Sabha seats, will vote in two phases on April 26 and May 7. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the Congress and JD-S fought together against the BJP and the combine was decimated. The BJP had won a record 25 seats; Congress and JD-S won just one seat each.