BENGALURU: With winning both Chincholi and Kundgol assembly seats being a compulsion more than an option for the party, the Bharatiya Janata Party has put in place a plan that will be driven by none other than State president B S Yeddyurappa.
In the next 10 days, the Lingayat strongman will visit both constituencies thrice with the single agenda of consolidating Lingayat votes. Yeddyurappa arrived in Kundgol on Sunday but limited his engagements to meeting local leaders, assessing ground reports and the mood of the electorate. While the Congress is hoping to ride the sympathy wave by fielding late C S Shivalli’s wife Kusuma Shivalli, the single-point agenda for the BJP is now the absolute consolidation of Lingayat votes --- numerically the most dominant electorate in the constituency.
Lingayats are the most dominant community in the constituency with about 82,000 voters followed by Kurubas who constitute about 30,000-35,000 voters. While the Congress is hoping to combine Siddaramaiah’s appeal as a Kuruba strongman, sympathy for Kusuma and joint forces of JD(S) & JD(U) leaders M S Akki and Hazrath Ali Jodmani to retain the seat adding a few thousand votes to their candidate, the BJP is hoping to mend the mistakes it made in the 2018 assembly elections which led to the party losing the seat with barely 634 votes.
“The mood is in our favour. We made a few mistakes in the assembly elections but those have been set right. There was dissent but it has been solved now. There is no doubt of absolute consolidation of Lingayat votes,” said a source close to Yeddyurappa.
The Congress too is confident of a victory in Kundgol with Water Resources Minister D K Shivakumar at the helm of affairs. While the party hopes that he recreates the Ballari bypoll magic, the BJP is confident that the same won’t repeat in Kundgol, especially in the absence of Shivalli -- a leader who not only consolidated Kuruba votes but held a sway on a portion of SC/ST, OBC and minority votes in the seat.
Keeping in mind the need for constant appealing to the Lingayat community, Yeddyurappa will return to Kundgol on May 10 before heading for three days to Chincholi. Closer to the election, Yeddyurappa will make another campaign trip to Kundgol on May 14 and stay put till the last day of campaigning. “Marathas and Lingayats have traditionally voted for the BJP in Kundgol but our advantage is going to be the combined strength of Janata candidates who will transfer their vote share to the Congress candidate,” said a Congress leader.Kundgol and Chincholi byelections are on May 19.