BJP looks to capitalise on Shah's visit to Dakshina Kannada
Mangaluru (PTI): The ruling BJP in Karnataka has made all arrangements to capitalise on the visit of Union Home Minister Amit Shah to the communally volatile Dakshina Kannada district on Saturday.
Though his visit is official in his capacity as the first Union Minister for Co-operation, the BJP sees an opportunity to turn his visit into a campaign for the Assembly elections in the state due in May.
The official function of Shah is the inauguration of the diamond jubilee celebrations of the Central Arecanut and Cocoa Marketing and Processing Co-operative limited (CAMPCO) in Puttur.
Later, he is scheduled to inaugurate the Bharat Mata Mandir built by Dharmashree Pratisthan at Hanumagiri, which is the second temple in south India for Bharat Mata after the one in Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu.
Dharmashree Pratisthan sources said the temple has been constructed at a cost of Rs 3 crore with the objective of inculcating a sense of patriotic feeling among the people.
The BJP plans to ensure the participation of at least one lakh people for the function, party sources said.
Shah will garland the statue of Bharat Mata and later pay floral tributes at the Amar Jawan Jyoti in Puttur. He will also visit Hanumagiri temple at Ishwaramangala and offer worship.
The BJP is planning to use the visit as the start of their election campaign in the district, often described as the party's 'Hindutva laboratory' in Karnataka. One of the most communally polarised districts in the state, Dakshina Kannada had last year witnessed murders along communal lines.
The murder of Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) leader Praveen Nettaru in July last year, followed by the killing of Fazil at Surathkal had further fuelled the communal conflict in the region.
As Shah had not visited the district in the recent past, the BJP wants to extract maximum political mileage out of the visit of the party's top leader.
In the last Assembly elections, BJP had won seven out of eight seats in Dakshina Kannada. The lone winner for Congress was U T Khader in Mangaluru segment. The party had also won the Dakshina Kannada Lok Sabha seat through its present state president Nalin Kumar Kateel.
The seats from the district are crucial for BJP to retain its hold in the coastal belt, while the opposition Congress is struggling hard to regain its lost glory in the region.
Congress leader and former MLC Ivan D'Souza has asked BJP leaders to apprise the Union minister about the pathetic condition of roads in the district. "We want the minister to talk about development instead of conducting road shows," he said at a press meet here on Thursday.
All official arrangements are being made to ensure security for the Union Home Minister's visit. ADGP (law and order) Alok Kumar, IGP (western range) Chandragupta and district superintendent of police Vikram Amathe are overseeing the security arrangements.
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Trump says he's inviting Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan to next year's G20 summit in Miami
West Palm Beach (AP): President Donald Trump said he will be extending invitations to next year's US-hosted Group of 20 summit to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan as the Republican administration looks to deepen its relationship with the Central Asian nations.
Trump announced the plan on Tuesday after holding separate phone calls with Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and Uzbekistan President Shavkat Mirziyoyev.
Neither country is a member of the G20, but the host country of the annual leaders' gathering of major economies often invites non-members to attend the summit. The 2026 gathering is planned for Trump's golf club in Doral, Florida, near Miami.
“The relationship with both Countries is spectacular,” Trump said in a social media post about the calls. Trump is currently on vacation at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
The Kazakh and Uzbek leaders visited Washington last month along with the leaders of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan for talks with Trump.
The administration is giving greater attention to Central Asia, which holds deep reserves of minerals and produces roughly half the world's uranium, as it intensifies the hunt for rare earth metals needed for high-tech devices, including smartphones, electric vehicles and fighter jets.
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Central Asia's critical mineral exports have long tilted toward China and Russia.
During last month's visit, Tokayev announced that his Muslim-majority country will join the Abraham Accords, the Trump administration effort to strengthen ties between Israel and Arab and Muslim majority countries.
The largely symbolic move came as the administration is trying to revive an initiative that was the signature foreign policy achievement of Trump's first term, when his administration forged diplomatic and commercial ties between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco.
Trump last month announced that he is barring South Africa from participating in next year's summit at his Miami-area club and will stop all payments and subsidies to the country over its treatment of a US government representative at this year's meeting.
Trump chose not to have an American government delegation attend this year's summit hosted by South Africa, saying he did so because its white Afrikaners were being violently persecuted. It is a claim that South Africa, which was mired for decades in racial apartheid, has rejected as baseless.
