PM to launch BJP poll campaign in Karnataka today with rally in Cong Prez Kharge's home turf
Bengaluru (PTI): Prime Minister Narendra Modi would formally kickstart the BJP's Lok Sabha election campaign in Karnataka on Saturday from Congress President M Mallikarjun Kharge's home turf - Kalaburagi.
He is scheduled to address a mega public meeting at the district headquarters town's N V Ground at 2 pm.
Kharge, who had represented Kalaburagi (Gulbarga Lok Sabha segment) twice in the past, lost to BJP's Umesh Jadhav by a margin of 95,452 votes in the 2019 general elections here - the octogenarian leader's first electoral loss in his political life spanning several decades.
BJP has once again fielded Jadhav from the segment.
Speculations are rife that the Leader of the Opposition in Rajya Sabha, who has the role of managing the party nationally and coordinating with the opposition INDIA bloc, may not contest the coming polls and, instead, the Congress is likely to field his son-in-law Radhakrishna Doddamani, a businessman, who also manages educational institutions.
On March 18, Modi will be in Shivamogga, the home district of veteran BJP leader B S Yediyurappa, and is scheduled to address a huge public meeting at 2 pm.
Yediyurappa's son B Y Raghavendra is the sitting MP from Shivamogga and has been re-nominated by the party. Yediyurappa's other son B Y Vijayendra, who represents Shikaripura Assembly constituency in the district, is the state BJP President.
The BJP has announced candidates for 20 seats in the State, which has a total of 28 constituencies.
After being ousted from power by the Congress in the 2023 Assembly polls, the BJP now is making a strong bid to regain the lost ground in Karnataka.
The BJP won 25 out of total 28 seats in the previous elections, and had ensured the win of a party supported independent candidate in Mandya. The then ruling Congress-JD(S) alliance had come a cropper winning just one seat each.
It is a role reversal of sorts for JD(S), which joined the NDA last September and has forged an electoral alliance with the BJP. The regional party is expected to contest in three seats - Mandya, Hassan and Kolar.
Sharing details of Modi's visit, state BJP General Secretary Sunil Kumar on Wednesday said BJP National President J P Nadda, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh Yogi Adityanath along with other leaders will visit different Lok Sabha constituencies for campaigning in the coming days.
Speaking about the party's poll preparations, he said: "We have divided 28 Lok Sabha constituencies into eight clusters for Lok Sabha elections. Keeping in view the local political and geographical background, programmes and strategies are being worked out in those eight clusters."
Several senior leaders including Shah and Nadda have already visited one of these clusters, Kumar said, adding, "workers' convention, well-wishers' contacts have been made and election preparations are on in all these eight clusters. In the second phase, large public meetings will be held."
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Pakistan reports two more polio cases; Total tally now 52
ISLAMABAD: At least two more cases of poliovirus were reported in Pakistan, taking the number of infections to 52 so far this year, a report said on Friday.
“The Regional Reference Laboratory for Polio Eradication at the National Institute of Health has confirmed the detection of two more wild poliovirus type 1 (WPV1) cases in Pakistan," an official statement said.
The fresh infections — a boy and a girl — were reported from the Dera Ismail Khan district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province.
“Genetic sequencing of the samples collected from the children is underway," the statement read. Dera Ismail Khan, one of the seven polio-endemic districts of southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, has reported five polio cases so far this year.
Of the 52 cases in the country this year, 24 are from Balochistan, 13 from Sindh, 13 from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and one each from Punjab and Islamabad.
There is no cure for polio. Only multiple doses of the oral polio vaccine and completion of the routine vaccination schedule for all children under the age of five can keep them protected.
