Bengaluru’s proposed RSS Vijayadashami route marches on October 25 face a formal permission hurdle after Karnataka Home Minister Priyank Kharge said that informing the Home Department or seeking police cooperation does not amount to approval. He asked the organisation to submit applications through the prescribed procedure and wait for authorisation before proceeding.
In a post on X on Tuesday, Kharge said the police needed sufficient time to plan personnel deployment, transport, food, traffic management, security and other logistical arrangements for the proposed marches. He said the arrangements would involve public resources and required details to be formally submitted to the competent authorities.
“Merely ‘informing’ or telling the Home Department to ‘cooperate’ or ‘make necessary arrangements’ is not the same as obtaining permission,” Kharge said, according to the report. He urged the RSS to complete the prescribed application form and provide the information required for the proposed events.
The minister cited the RSS’ Akhil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Sabha Annual Report 2025-26, which he said recorded 562 route marches across Karnataka involving 2,21,963 uniformed participants. Kharge said the scale of the proposed activity would require substantial preparation by the police if large numbers of participants were to march through Karnataka’s streets on the same day.
The report also reproduced letters submitted by RSS units to police stations in Bengaluru. A letter dated October 15 from the Kamalanagar unit informed the Mahalakshmi Layout police station about a procession scheduled to begin at 9 am from a ground beside the Shiva temple on Pipeline Road. The proposed route would pass through Kempegowda Layout and Kasturi Layout before returning to the starting point.
A separate communication to the Nandini Layout police station and traffic police referred to a route march in Laggere from 9 am to 12.30 pm. The proposed procession would start at 9.30 am from Gate-1 of the Apollo National School ground in Chowdeshwari Nagar, pass through several streets and conclude at Gate-2 of the school.
The letters sought police cooperation or brought the proposed events to the authorities’ notice, while Kharge said such communication should not be treated as formal permission. The distinction places the proposed marches within the city’s broader system of event regulation, where police authorities must assess routes, timings, crowd movement, traffic diversions and security requirements before allowing a public procession.
Kharge has also alleged that the RSS is an unregistered organisation and has sought details of its revenues and expenditure. The RSS has maintained that not everything in India needs to be registered. The dispute over the organisation’s status is separate from the minister’s immediate demand that the proposed marches follow the prescribed permission process.
The next step, according to Kharge’s statement, is for the RSS units to submit complete applications to the relevant authorities and await formal approval for the October 25 route marches.
