Just over a month after Congress president Sonia Gandhi visited Karnataka on a politically significant mission — wooing the influential Lingayats who brought the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to power almost eight years ago — party general secretary Rahul Gandhi will travel to Hubli to address a meeting of the Youth Congress' national executive on June 1 there, before travelling to Davangere, to talk to heads of district Congress committees and block presidents.
The party's choice of Hubli and Davangere is being seen as significant as they fall in what is a Lingayat-dominated territory.
The State unit of the ruling BJP is in a shambles, with the former Chief Minister, B.S. Yeddyurappa, challenging his party's national leadership. For the Congress, there is finally light at the end of the tunnel and it is hoping to be back in power next year when elections to the Karnataka Assembly are due. Indeed, if Mr. Yeddyurrapa's revolt takes a more serious shape, Congress sources said, the elections could even be advanced to the end of this year, and held along with the Gujarat elections.
It is against this backdrop that the visits of Ms. Gandhi and her son are being viewed in political circles, especially as Mr. Yeddyurapa is a Lingayat, and his leadership helped to bring in the support of this powerful community.
So even as the BJP is trying to restore order and unity in its State unit, its ability to defend Mr. Yeddyurappa has been circumscribed by the ongoing CBI investigation against him. While earlier reports had suggested that both the Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha and senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley and general secretary in charge of Karnataka affairs Dharmendra Pradhan would be travelling to Bangalore to help resolve the issue, eventually only Mr. Pradhan made the trip.
The Congress, which lost power in Karnataka in 2004, has been trying to get a toehold ever since: of course, it had headed a coalition with the Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) for about 20 months between 2004 and 2006. All this activity on the part of the party's seniormost leaders is a sign that the Congress does not wish to be caught napping.
