NEW DELHI: Concerned over the BJP scaling up its attempts to polarise voters in poll-bound Karnataka, Congress president Rahul Gandhi wants the party’s state unit to counter the saffron party with a positive agenda.
At a strategy session chaired by Rahul on January 13, many senior Congress leaders from the state expressed concern over the BJP playing up the Hindutva card ahead of Assembly polls in April, sources said.
Rahul, who is all set to launch his poll campaign in the state next month, asked Chief Minister K Siddaramaiah at the meeting to counter the BJP, but avoid falling in its trap.
“The BJP will go ahead with its agenda. The best anti-dote to any polarisation attempt is positive agenda highlighting the work done by the state government over the past four years. That is what Rahulji wants to be the party’s focus in Karnataka,” a senior AICC functionary said.
“Rahul is expected to launch his poll campaign in the state on February 10 and will cover major areas of Karnataka,” AICC in-charge for Karnataka K C Venugopal said.
The CM has already been travelling across the state over the past one month in a major voter connect initiative and local leaders have been asked to follow suit. The state Congress has been advised to publicise the achievements of the Congress government through door-to-door campaigns.
“We have fulfilled majority of the promises from the 2013 manifesto. But we need to explain it to the voters,” said a leader.
Referring to Rahul’s temple-hopping during the Gujarat poll campaign, which achieved a fair degree of success in nullifying BJP’s Hindutva politics, Congress insiders said it hadn’t been decided yet whether the strategy would be adopted in Karnataka as well. “Karnataka is quite different from Gujarat. Dividing people by fanning communal passions here may not be easy,” said a Congress strategist.
Party insiders averred that Venugopal has asked state leaders not to let their guard down, become complacent or make silly mistakes like party veteran Mani Shankar Aiyar, whose “neech” comment against Prime Minister Narendra Modi is believed to have helped the BJP in the Gujarat polls.
Karnataka is the only big state in the Congress kitty at present and Rahul does not want to take any chances, the sources said.