BENGALURU: The Veershaiva-Lingayat community leaders in Congress are taking advantage of an apparent rift within the BJP to seek more tickets to contest the coming assembly polls from Bengaluru.
It all started with Housing Minister V Somanna and revenue minister R Ashoka, both faces of the community in BJP party in Bengaluru, locking horns, leading to the party’s Vijay Sankalp Yatra being abruptly stopped at Nagarbhavi recently, bringing to the fore the differences between the two.
Congress party leaders from the Veerashaiva-Lingayat community in Bengaluru met on Tuesday evening and decided to seek more tickets to contest from the constituencies in the state capital, feeling this was the right time to strike.
The president of Veerashaiva Mahasabha Bengaluru Urban district S Guruswamy on Wednesday wrote to the AICC president Mallikarjuna Kharge seeking more seats for the members of the community.
He has targeted those constituencies where the community has its presence, including Rajajinagar, which has more than 40,000 voters from the community. He has particularly backed former deputy mayor of Bengaluru BS Puttaraju as the latter is on good terms with the party’s top brass including senior Congress leader Siddararamaiah, who belongs to the Kuruba community, which too has a sizeable presence
in the constituency.
In Bengaluru City, Rural and Ramanagara, despite having sizable votes the community was ignored in 2018 Assembly polls besides in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, he pointed out.