NEW DELHI: The BJP is planning to pull out all the stops in order to wrest Karnataka from the Congress.
The party has put in place a team of 50 comprising Union Ministers and Central leaders and it will be unleashed on the southern state in the days to come. The BJP plans to micro-manage the poll campaign, just as it did in Uttar Pradesh to storm to power in 2017.
Union Ministers J P Nadda, Thavar Chand Gehlot, Piyush Goyal, Prakash Javadekar and Ananth Kumar are among the team of 50 that BJP president Amit Shah has put together.
Central party leaders, including vice president Vinay Sahashrabuddhe and general secretaries Bhupendra Yadav and Anil Jain have also been enlisted to boost the campaign.
“Each team has been assigned roughly four Assembly seats in Karnataka. The Central leaders will team up with the local leadership to canvas for party candidates, besides fine-tuning the campaign,” a senior BJP functionary said. Party sources said the scale of the operation is unparalleled. Even when the BJP launched its campaign to retain Gujarat, the magnitude of its operation did not reach the level that will be reached in Karnataka.
In Gujarat, the BJP had formed a team of Central ministers under the leadership of Finance Minister Arun Jaitely with the task of coordinating campaign strategies in 30 seats each in the state.
“Internal assessments suggest a tough battle in Karnataka. There is a large electorate which is sitting on the fence. We will need to mount a massive campaign in the last few weeks to swing this section in our favour,” the BJP functionary said.
The BJP chief has also constituted a core team comprising Goyal, Javadekar and Yadav to strategise on the campaign.
“The BJP had roped in scores of Union ministers for campaigning in UP but they were not asked to look after Assembly constituencies. Karnataka is different for this reason and the party is making an extra effort to repeat the electoral success of Himachal Pradesh. A BJP win in Karnataka is crucial for the party for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections,” the BJP leader said.
On Saturday, Shah said the state government was raking up the issue of religious minority tag for Lingayats to prevent BS Yeddyurappa from becoming CM. “Had Siddaramaiahji been serious about giving minority status to Lingayats, he should have done it in the early stages of his five-year term. Why now, after four-and-a-half years?” Shah asked.