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Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Karnataka is keen to increase its Lok Sabha seat tally from the state from 16 (which it won in 2014) to 22 seats in the forthcoming general elections.
To achieve this, BJP has not only decided to re-nominate 16 sitting Members of Parliament (MPs) but also exploring to field late Union minister Ananth Kumar’s wife, Tejaswini from Bengaluru-South. Umesh Jadhav, Congress MLA from Chittapur who resigned to join BJP recently, likely to take on senior Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge from Kalaburagi and to back film personality Sumalatha from Mandya as an independent.
“So far no decision has been taken. But a final decision will be taken on march 15 when the party’s core committee meets to decide candidates for Lok Sabha elections,” said Karnataka BJP president BS Yeddyurappa. With regard to Sumalatha, Yeddyurappa said “We will wait for a decision to be announced by her.”
Talking about election issues that BJP will be focussing on in Karnataka, Yeddyurappa said, “We will be focussing on three main issues — achievements under Narendra Modi’s five-year rule, failures of JDS-Congress coalition in Karnataka and BJP’s achievements when it was in power.”
“NDA government’s achievement under Modi will act as a protective cover to seek votes when we hit the streets for campaigning. This will help BJP to win a minimum of 22 seats.” he added.
Modi rallies
Answering to a question of how tough it will be for BJP to take on JDS-Congress coalition, Yeddyurappa said “It is beneficial for us and we can highlight their failures before the people.”
“Deve Gowda changing constituency or migrating to another seat will not alter our strategy, we will give him a tough fight where ever he contests,” he added.
BJP Karnataka election campaign in-charge R Ashoka said, “All election related work especially reaching out to all the villages is being done before the candidate selection. Earlier, we were scrambling to get things organised after candidate selection.”
“For this election, we plan to hold four-to-five mega rallies of Prime Minister Modi in Karnataka. We have already held two in North Karnataka – Hubballi and Kalaburagi.” Ashoka added.
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