Congress president Rahul Gandhi will kick off his Karnataka campaign with a three-day trip to the State starting on February 10.
This was decided at a meeting convened by Mr. Gandhi in Delhi on Saturday to review the party’s preparedness for the Assembly elections in the State.
Though the Election Commission is yet to decide on the dates, elections to the 225-member Assembly is expected to be held in March-April.
Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, after the meeting, told presspersons that his government did not face any anti-incumbency factor as it delivered on the promises made in the manifesto.
The leaders who attended the review meeting included Karnataka Congress chief G. Parameshwara and the former Chief Minister M. Veerappa Moily.
Senior leaders who attended the meeting told The Hindu that the focus would be to highlight popular schemes such as free milk for schoolchildren or the Ksheer Bhagyam Indira canteens that served breakfast at just five rupees and subsidised food under Anna Bhagyam .
Enthused by its aggressive campaign in Gujarat, the Congress wants to push an equally effective campaign. “Our narrative should be such that we don’t allow the BJP to trap us in any polarising issue. In Gujarat, they tried the usual Hindu-Muslim [theme] but Rahul ji kept the focus on 22 years of BJP rule, jobs and so on. Our narrative will be a step ahead of theirs,” said a senior Karnataka leader who attended Saturday’s meeting .
Key battleground
Karnataka is a key battle State for both the BJP and the Congress. The BJP is looking for a comeback in the only South Indian State where it had ever formed government in the past and has named B.S. Yeddyuruppa as its chief ministerial face.
For the Congress, it is the only State with economic and political clout where the party is in power. Though the party won Punjab last year, Karnataka is among the top economic performers.
Winning Karnataka will be a morale booster for the Congress ahead of the battle for 2019, while for the BJP, wresting the State from the Congress would help its emergence as a truly pan-Indian party beyond the Hindi belt.
Earlier this week, at a rally in Chitradurga, Mr. Shah said the State government was “anti-Hindu” as it had withdrawn cases against the Social Democratic Party of India, the political wing of the Popular Front of India, a hardline Islamic organisation.
To counter such allegations, Mr. Gandhi is reportedly going to continue with his very public temple visits.
Published - January 13, 2018 10:54 pm IST
