BENGALURU : To reverse its electoral fortunes and to reach out tovoters ahead of the 2023 Assembly elections, the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) will hold 100 rallies, which will be led by KPCC president D K Shivakumar and Congress Legislature Party leader Siddaramaiah, in seats that it lost in the 2018 polls.
The Grand Old Party won 80 seats in the last Assembly elections, but the numbers shrunk to 67 the next year after some of its MLAs resigned and joined BJP. In the 15 Assembly segments where the bypolls were held in 2019, Congress managed to win just two. In 2020, it drew a blank in Sira and RR Nagar constituencies.
With such bitter lessons, the party high command is said to be applying pressure on KPCC leaders to strengthen the party and improve its tally in future elections, and the rallies are part of KPCC’s efforts
in that direction. KPCC working president Saleem Ahmed said that Shivakumar will travel across the State from the first week of March. “We will cover 100 places this year.
We will highlight the failures of the Union and State governments. We will interact with people, review our panchayat committees and strengthen the party. This will also help us in the ensuing taluk and zilla panchayat elections. We will stress on sangharsh (protest) and sanghatan (strengthen) throughout this year,” he said. Sources said that the party has shortlisted 100 Assembly constituencies that they lost in 2018. “Our leaders will walk 2 km at each constituency.
These rallies will be headed by either Shivakumar or Siddaramiah along with local leaders. They will raise issues like demerits of the new farm laws, price hike among other problems,” they added. The team will visit 3-4 constituencies in a week and apart from meeting local leaders, they will also interact with religious heads. “This will help the party in selecting candidates for elections as the rallies will throw up local leaders who are popular,” they said.
Apart from these rallies, different wings of the party (women, SCs/STs, minority, youth, among others) will organise 16-20 conventions across the State. Siddaramaiah too is planning to launch an Ahinda (Acronym for Minorities, Backward Classes and Dalits) rally. The ruling BJP too is adopting a similar strategy to woo voters in those constituencies that it lost in the last election.