The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has set in motion its plan to capture Karnataka by energising the party cadre through a statewide “parivartan yatra”. Karnataka will go for elections early next year.
As many as 13 Union Ministers, five Chief Ministers and other senior party leaders are expected to visit the state in the next 40 days, joining the “parivartan yatra” which was kicked off from Bengaluru on 2 November by party national president Amit Shah.
“Karnataka is very important for the BJP. When we first won the Assembly elections there, it was considered as the gateway to South India, as the party has traditionally been strong only in North India. We lost Karnataka in 2013. But this time, we are making all out efforts to get it back,” said a senior party leader. The party, which came to power for the first time in 2008, lost in 2013, mainly due to the exit of its powerful leader, B.S. Yeddyurappa, who was leading the government there.
However, this time the party does not want to take any chances and has started doing its groundwork well in advance.
After being reinducted into the party, Yeddyurappa was made the state BJP president. The party also announced him as the chief ministerial candidate for the Assembly elections, due for May 2018.
The 84-day “parivartan yatra”, spearheaded by Yeddyurappa, will travel over 7,500 km to cover all the 224 Assembly constituencies across 30 districts in the state and will conclude in Mysore on 25 January.
“The event started with a rally in Bengaluru on 2 November. There will be one rally on 21 December at Hubli, which will be attended by many Central leaders. There will be a massive rally on 28 November in Bengaluru, which will be addressed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself,” said Ashwathnarayan, an MLC in the Karnataka Assembly, who is touring different parts of the state for the yatra.
Some of the prominent leaders who are participating in the yatra are Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Devendra Fadnavis, Raman Singh, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Vasundhara Raje, Uma Bharti and Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti. Besides, the yatra will feature some young faces like BJP’s youth wing president Poonam Mahajan, her predecessor Anurag Thakur, and Maharashtra minister Pankaja Munde.
Another senior Karnataka BJP leader Anwar Manippady said the yatra was getting massive support from the people. “We are telling the people how the funds sent by the Central government are not being utilised,” he said. Yeddyurappa, who became the first BJP Chief Minister in Karnataka, had a bitter relationship with the party leadership earlier and broke away from the BJP just before the 2013 elections. Yeddyurappa successfully contested as a Karnataka Janata Paksha (KJP) candidate. However, his party could win only six seats while the BJP won 40 seats. Subsequently he returned to the BJP.