BENGALURU: Former Chief Minister and Congress Legislature Party leader Siddaramaiah is planning a series of meetings, conventions and rallies to bring Backward Castes and Dalits back into the party fold. He laid out his plans before the Congress leadership at a meeting with former AICC president Rahul Gandhi. The strategies for the Maski, Basavakalyan and Sindagi assembly bypolls and Belagavi Lok Sabha bypoll also came up for discussion.
They spoke of the need to revamp the KPCC organisational structure, which has not happened for nearly a decade. The recent confusion in the Karnataka Youth Congress president’s elections, where the winner was disqualified after the vote count and a huge number of votes was termed invalid, and other related issues were discussed.
While there have been complaints that not enough is being done to support farmers in their anti-farm bill protests, Siddaramaiah listed out plans to connect better with farmers and take the agitation to gram panchayats across the state, where the real farmers reside.
In the 2018 elections, the Congress largely retained the minority vote, but its vote-share among Backward Castes and Dalits was eroded, compared to the 2013 vote-share. In 2019, its support shrunk even further, especially from among Backwards and Dalits. The Congress is now planning an outreach to win them back. The Congress is working on its strategy as Karnataka is headed for bypolls, and Zilla Panchayat and Taluk Panchayat polls after the budget session.Siddaramaiah was accompanied by H M Revanna, Prakash Rathod, Ashok Pattan, Zameer Ahmed Khan and Ivan D’Souza when he met Rahul Gandhi.
Rahul, Priyanka likely to attend DKS’ daughter reception
Bengaluru: Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi and his sister Priyanka Gandhi, who is also party general secretary, are expected to fly to Bengaluru on Wednesday (February 17) to attend the reception of KPCC chief DK Shivakumar’s daughter Aisshwarya and Amartya Hegde — grandson of former CM S M Krishna — to be held in a private city hotel. Amartya is the son of Cafe Coffee Day founder V G Siddhartha and Krishna’s daughter Malavika. Shivakumar took to social media urging his supporters not to gatecrash the reception and also that those with invitations should bless the couple from their homes owing to the pandemic. His appeal comes after close to 1,000 people without valid invitations gatecrashed the wedding.