With just two weeks remaining for the April 17 Lok Sabha elections in Karnataka, the BJP is preparing for a decisive blitzkrieg.
Almost the entire galaxy of BJP star campaigners, including party national president Rajnath Singh, senior leader Sushma Swaraj, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan, Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje and possibly even L K Advani are likely to come down to the state.
The party also succeeded in convincing Tollywood superstar Pawan Kalyan to campaign in constituencies with high concentration of Telugu-speaking people.
BJP candidate from Chikballapur B N Bachche Gowda, who is locked in a no holds barred fight against Union Minister Veerappa Moily of the Congress and H D Kumaraswamy of the JD(S), said Pawan would address a rally in Chikballapur soon. He said Modi too would address a rally on April 13.
However, BJP sources said Modi’s rally in Chikballapur has not been finalised yet.
BJP state spokesperson Suresh Kumar told Express that efforts are on to ensure as many Modi rallies as possible in the state in the next two weeks.
According to party sources, Modi would address at least six rallies. He is likely to visit the state on April 8 to address rallies in Mysore and Bangalore.
“We are confident of bringing Modi again after April 10 to address rallies in Chikmagalur, Raichur, Koppal and Davangere,” sources said.
Even as reports of an undercurrent against Moily is doing the rounds in Chikballapur, BJP candidate Gowda alleged that Moily has entered into a secret pact with Kumaraswamy. BJP leadership views Kumaraswamy’s entry into the fray as a deliberate move to split the Vokkaliga votes -- a big chunk of it would have gone to Gowda otherwise.
Goof-ups
As elections near, the issues in data consolidation by the Karnataka and central election offices have put officials in a fix. More than 5,000 voters from the ‘Others’ category have ‘disappeared’ from the state electoral rolls.
Officials blame it on the duplication and error in the counting process itself. The Election Commission has 8,453 people in the ‘Others’ category on its rolls, while the state has just 3,957.
Officials are now scrambling to fix the error in order to ascertain the exact number of voters.