MANGALURU: Just hours before the release of the third and final list of candidates, district BJP sounded the election bugle from familiar environs of its lucky election office, near Bunts hostel circle on Thursday.
Leaving nothing to chance, BJP leaders had settled for the building as its election office with a firm belief that the building will bring good luck for BJP candidates in assembly elections. “An NRI’s prime property with a dilapidated tiled-house was first used as election office by BJP in 2004,’’ recollected Mangaluru BJP MP Nalin Kumar Kateel.
In 2004, a part of DK district was under Udupi Loka Sabha constituency and Kodagu under Mangaluru constituency. As elections were declared simultaneously for both Lok Sabha and Karnataka assembly elections, BJP leaders had decided on the building as ideal for BJP election office.
“During that election, six out of the total eight assembly segments under Mangaluru Lok Sabha were swept by BJP. Sadananda Gowda was elected as Mangaluru MP after he defeated M Veerappa Moily. After the delimitation exercise in 2009, the party fielded me as candidate from Mangaluru Lok Sabha constituency,” Kateel said.
“Apart from party workers, I was not known to the voters. But the building has brought us good luck and thus I won the elections with a margin of 40,000 votes. In 2013 assembly elections, BJP’s party office near PVS circle was used as an election office and the disastrous results were there for all to see,” he recalled.
“In 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the building which brings good luck to BJP, was used as an election office. In that election, I won by 1.5 lakh votes. Thus it is no mere building but a ‘Vijayi Karyalaya’ for BJP,” Nalin said.
Poll goals
BJP state president B S Yeddyurappa after filing his papers in Shikaripura on Thursday. He later said that on becoming the chief minister, he will reserve D1 lakh crore for integrated irrigation projects in the state
| Shimoga Nandan