Headlines
BJP meet, Modi speech re-boots its Karnataka unit
By
Fakir BalajiBengaluru, April 4
The Karnataka unit of the
BJP is hoping to capitalise on hosting the party's national executive
meeting and the overwhelming response to the prime minister's public
meeting here on Friday night.
"The leadership has done a favour
by asking us to host the party's first executive meet after coming to
power at the centre, as the occasion gave us an opportunity to win back
people's faith and demonstrate our ability to deliver," BJP's state unit
president Pralhad Joshi told IANS here on Saturday.
Smarting
under the loss of power in the southern state after a five-year
(2008-13) tumultuous rule, which witnessed three chief ministers and a
spate of scandals and scams, the party has been waiting to revive its
fortunes though it had won 17 of the 28 Lok Sabha seats in the state in
the 2014 general election.
"The huge turnout at the public
meeting is very reassuring as the party and our leader (Narendra Modi)
remain popular and he commands respect. We learnt many people came from
outside the city too," Joshi claimed.
Though the election to the
state legislative assembly is three years away, the state unit of the
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has decided to cash in on the goodwill
Modi's stirring hour-long speech generated in the people across the
state and the nationwide attention on the executive meeting here since
Thursday.
"Even after losing in the May 2013 assembly elections
due to many factors, including division of votes, we came back strong to
win 17 parliamentary seats, one less than 18 we had won in the 2009
general elections, which proves our support base and vote share remains
intact across the state," Joshi recalled.
Joshi is also a BJP lawmaker from the Hubli-Dharward Lok Sabha seat, about 400 km from here.
With
the return of its first chief minister in south India B.S. Yeddyurappa
to the party fold last year and his posting as its national
vice-president despite graft cases pending against him, a dozen local
leaders, including lawmakers loyal to him, urged Modi and party
president Amit Shah to make him the state unit president to prepare for
the 2018 assembly election.
"We lost in the 2013 assembly
elections after Yeddyurappa left the party (December 2011), formed a
regional outfit -- Karnataka Janata Party (KJP) - and contested against
us, resulting in our vote share splitting and benefiting the Congress,"
party's Rajya Sabha lawmaker Prabhakar Kore told IANS.
In the
2013 assembly poll to 224 constituencies across the state, the BJP had
won just 40 seats as against 108 in the 2008 election, and the KJP
bagged six, while another regional outfit (BSR-Congress), floated by
former BJP minister and the party's Lok Sabha member from Ballari B.R.
Sriramulu, ended up with four as all their traditional votes had split.
"Return
of Yeddyurappa and Sriramulu benefited the party in the 2014 Lok Sabha
elections as we averted vote split and consolidated our base since
then," Kore said.
Though Modi and Shah gave Yeddyurappa's
loyalists a patient hearing, they did not commit to them as elections to
the state unit's office-bearers' posts are three years away and Joshi
had won appreciation from the leadership for his contribution in the
2014 general election and in organising the executive meeting so well in
the city at short notice.
Yeddyurappa also represents the party from the Shivamogga Lok Sabha seat, about 270 km from here.
Be
that as it may, Shah's observation at the party's office-bearers'
meeting on Thursday that the state could face an early assembly poll in
view of the rumblings in the ruling Congress has also galvanised the
state leaders and cadres to activate their election machinery.
"Since
Shah told us to prepare for the assembly polls, which could be held
before 2018 when it is due otherwise, we will step-up our membership
drive and get ready to take on the Congress anytime at the hustings,"
former BJP minister and party spokesman C.T. Ravi said.
(Fakir Balaji can be contacted at [email protected])