With hardly a week left for the bypolls for Nanjangud and Gundlupet Assembly constituencies, the campaign has peaked with leaders of both the Congress and the BJP making a last-ditch effort to cover grounds to woo the electorate.
While Chief Minister Mr. Siddaramaiah has played down the impact of the bypolls on the State government in his public speeches, the party is leaving no stone unturned to retain the two constituencies.
The Congress has not only appointed two Ministers as overall in-charge of Nanjangud and Gundlupet constituencies, it has also released a list of other leaders who have been vested with the responsibility to micro-manage the poll strategy and preparations.
Ministers H.C. Mahadevappa and Allum Veerabhadrappa are overall in-charge and in addition five other Ministers — H. Anjaneya, S.S. Mallikarjun, Basavaraja Rayareddy, Umashree, and Tanvir Sait — are responsible for devising strategies at panchayat levels which underlines the seriousness with which the Congress is approaching the bypolls.
Similarly, the entire BJP leadership in the State, led by the party State president B.S. Yeddyurappa, have fanned out across the two constituencies.
From the BJP side, Mr. Yeddyurappa is a constant factor along with Shobha Karandlaje, MP.
Other BJP leaders touring the two constituencies include K.S. Eshwarappa, C.T. Ravi, Sriramulu, Jagadish Shettar, V. Somanna, C.H. Vijayshankar, S.A. Ramdas, Ananthkumar, D.V. Sadananda Gowda to name a few.
Sources in the BJP say Mr. Yeddyurappa was slugging it out in the Nanjangud-Gundlupet bypolls as a victory here would propel him as the Chief Ministerial face of the BJP during the Assembly elections next year and has been promised so by the party’s central leadership. Hence, Mr. Yeddyurappa was trying to forge a new equation of the predominant Lingayats with the OBCs and Dalits symbolised by Srinivas Prasad to win the bypolls.
In connection with this, the BJP, which is is banking on the consolidation of both the Veerashaiva and the OBC votes in its favour, conducted a OBC Samavesha on Sunday. At the samavesha and the booth level meetings, Mr. Yeddyurappa said that the elections would be a turning point as the Dalits and the OBCs have realised that the Congress only exploited them for the past 70 years and used them as a vote bank. He said there was a nation-wide awakening among the OBCs and Dalits that the Congress had done very little for them over the years and the recent electoral success of the BJP in Uttar Pradesh was a fallout of such an awakening. Hence, the BJP would win both Nanjangud and Gundlupet bypolls as well, he added.
