The scorching summer and heat-wave conditions have taken the sheen off the campaign for the Lok Sabha election in the Gulbarga region.
The early onset of heat- wave conditions with day temperatures zooming to 41 degrees Celsius in the first week of April is unusual. Such conditions are usually felt sometime in the second and third week of April and peaks in May, only to come down in the first week of June. This year, the temperature started shooting up from the second week of March.
The subtle change in the weather pattern has affected the election campaigning and detailed plans drawn by political parties have gone awry.
The day temperature in Gulbarga has already crossed 41 degrees Celsius. In Bellary, day temperature peaked to 41 degrees Celsius on March 30 and March 31.
Political parties and candidates are not in a position to take out padayatras to villages after 11 a.m. Even public rallies and street-corner meetings are limited to a few villages as it is difficult for the people to attend them.
Candidates of major political parties are forced to start their campaigning earlier in the morning and they retire to take rest in the afternoon only to resume the campaign late in the evening.
Though Railway Minister M. Mallikarjun Kharge of the Congress and the former Minister Revu Naik Belamagi of the BJP are not unfamiliar with the adverse weather conditions, they too are avoiding taking out padayatras during the day. They are addressing meetings in big villages and street-corner meetings in small villages.
Senior leaders of parties, who manage the campaign trail, expressed their difficulty in not being able to take up normal campaigning by visiting villages and taking out padayatras, which is an effective method to send the message of candidates and parties.
“We don’t have time to cover all the 1,800 plus villages in the constituency...the regulations of the Election Commission prevent us from holding public meetings beyond 10 p.m. This is a Catch-22 situation for all the political parties,” a senior Congress leader said.
