Today, PM Modi will hold a rally in Cong President Kharge’s hometown to kick off the BJP’s Karnataka election campaign

BENGALURU: On Saturday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will officially launch the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Lok Sabha election campaign in Karnataka from Kalaburagi, the home base of Congress President M Mallikarjun Kharge. At 2:00 pm, he is expected to speak at a large-scale public gathering held at the N V Ground in the district headquarters town.

In the 2019 general elections, Kharge, who had previously served as the Lok Sabha segment representative for Kalaburagi (Gulbarga), was defeated by Umesh Jadhav of the BJP by a margin of 95,452 votes. This was the octogenarian leader’s first electoral defeat in a number of decades.

Jadhav is the BJP’s nominee in this segment once again.
There is much talk that the Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, who oversees the party’s national affairs and works with the opposition INDIA bloc, might not run in the upcoming elections. Instead, the Congress is expected to field his son-in-law, businessman Radhakrishna Doddamani, who also oversees educational institutions.
On March 18, Modi is expected to speak at a sizable public gathering at 2:00 pm in Shivamogga, the hometown area of renowned BJP leader B.S. Yediyurappa.
The party has nominated Yediyurappa’s son, B.Y. Raghavendra, who is now the Shivamogga MP, again. The state BJP President is Yediyurappa’s second son, B.Y. Vijayendra, who is a district legislator for the Shikaripura Assembly seat.
There are 28 constituencies in the state, and the BJP has declared candidates for 20 of them.
Following the Congress’s victory in the 2023 Assembly elections, the BJP is currently putting up a vigorous fight to reclaim the lost position in Karnataka.
In the last elections, the BJP won 25 of the 28 seats available and guaranteed victory for an independent candidate backed by the party in Mandya. With just one seat each, the then-ruling Congress-JD(S) partnership had collapsed.
For JD(S), which formed an electoral alliance with the BJP after joining the NDA in September of last year, it is a kind of role reversal. It is anticipated that the regional party would run for three seats: Kolar, Hassan, and Mandya.
State BJP General Secretary Sunil Kumar provided details of Modi’s visit on Wednesday. He said that BJP National President J.. P.. Nadda, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh Yogi Adityanath, and other leaders will be campaigning in various Lok Sabha seats in the coming days.
“We have divided 28 Lok Sabha constituencies into eight clusters for Lok Sabha elections,” he stated, referring to the party’s electoral preparations. Programmes and strategies are being developed in those eight areas with consideration for the local political and geographic context.”
“Workers’ convention, well-wishers’ contacts have been made,, and election preparations are on in all these eight clusters,” Kumar said, adding that many prominent officials, including Shah and Nadda, have already visited one of these clusters. There will be significant public gatherings during the second phase.”