By IANS
Bangalore : The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Karnataka is all fired up over its prospects in the coming assembly polls following the party’s spectacular show in Gujarat under Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership. But voters in the state haven’t been too impressed by him earlier.
The state unit feels it is too early to talk about the role Modi will play in the campaign for the elections to the 224-member assembly, expected in April-May next year.
The victory in Gujarat has made Modi a well-known figure in Karnataka but he had failed to charm voters in the state when he campaigned for the BJP in two by-polls in 2005, for the Chamarajpet assembly seat in Bangalore and the Shimoga Lok Sabha seat.
In Chamarajpet, one of the oldest localities in Bangalore city, the BJP candidate came a poor third, securing just over 9,900 votes of around 55,000 votes polled.
A very small constituency, Chamarajpet has only a little over 100,000 eligible voters. It is a mixed electorate of educated middle-class and a large slum population. Muslims constitute a sizeable population in the constituency.
Modi had also campaigned in the Shimoga Lok Sabha constituency but did not make much of an impact as the seat was retained by S. Bangarappa, former Karnataka chief minister, who contested on a Samajwadi Party ticket.
Ironically, Bangarappa had won the seat a year earlier as the BJP candidate. The BJP came third in the by-poll.
“But then Modi was not as well-known as now after the party’s victory in Gujarat. And our cadre will be inspired to go the extra mile for victory if Modi campaigns this time,” said a BJP leader requesting anonymity as any major role for Modi outside Gujarat has to decided by the party central leadership.
“It is too early to talk about such issues,” said state BJP chief D.V. Sadananda Gowda.
“Yes. In the course of the election campaign in Karnataka, Modi may also take part,” Gowda told IANS.
“Right now, Modi is busy with government formation in Gujarat and related issues. Also we ourselves have not started election process like candidate selection. We are busy chalking out our strategy.”
While Modi made development and tackling terrorism the main poll plank in Gujarat, he had concentrated on growing Maoist activities in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh during his by-poll speeches in Chamarajpet and Shimoga.
Typical of his penchant for diatribe against Congress leaders, Modi had called the then Congress chief minister of Karnataka N. Dharam Singh ‘Naram (soft) Singh’ for not putting down the Maoist guerrillas.
Since ‘K’ follows ‘G’, Gujarat and Karnataka chief ministers usually sit next to each other at chief ministers’ meets. Modi poked fun at Dharam Singh by saying: “Your chief minister dozes off at such meetings”.
But before planning to cash in on Modi-brand of campaigning, Karnataka BJP has to sort of the confusion on its poll plank.
It thought of the Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) ‘betrayal’ as the main agenda soon after it was deprived of the chief minister’s office in October. However, it has recently started talking of corruption during the 20 month rule of JD-S Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy
Kumaraswamy and his father and JD-S president H D Deve Gowda are pretty relieved as the emphasis on ‘betrayal’ is getting diluted. They have hit back saying they have documents to expose what BJP did while in power in coalition with their party.