Ashish Ranjan
Rahul Gandhi Karnataka Campaign: Next month, Rahul Gandhi will launch his campaign in Karnataka for the May 10 state elections. The April 5 rally will be held in Kolar, the location where Mr. Gandhi made the remark about Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s surname that resulted in his two-year prison sentence and disqualification from parliament.
“Rahul Gandhi will return to Kolar and begin his Satyameva Jayate Rally. We had requested that he begin his election yatra from here. Where he made this statement, which was condemned by the BJP, he will begin his mega rally,” said state party chief DK Shivakumar.
At a rally in Kolar ahead of the 2019 elections, Mr. Gandhi had asked, “Why do all thieves share the surname Modi?” in an apparent jab at the Prime Minister, referring to fugitive businessmen Lalit Modi and Nirav Modi.
However, the BJP viewed this as an insult to Other Backward Classes, and Purnesh Modi, a party leader from Gujarat, submitted a lawsuit in response.Mr. Gandhi declined to apologize for his remark. He was disqualified from the Lok Sabha on Friday, prompting an outcry from the opposition.
The leaders of 18 opposition parties have criticized the government, a development that the Congress sees as a “silver lining” and a catalyst for opposition unity ahead of the general election next year.The Election Commission announced the election date for Karnataka earlier today, where the governing BJP is seeking a second consecutive term in office.
A year after forming a coalition government with HD Kumaraswamy’s Janata Dal Secular in Karnataka in 2018, the Congress lost power. The collapse of the alliance government was precipitated by the defection of a number of MLAs.The two parties blamed the BJP for the collapse of the government.
This time around, the Congress is again running alone. When asked if the party would form a post-election alliance with Mr. Kumaraswamy’s JDS in the event of a divided assembly, DK Shivakumar told , “There will be a single largest party.”
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K Srinivasa Gowda, a senior member of Mr. Kumarasamy’s party, is the incumbent MLA for Kolar. When asked if senior party leader Siddaramaiah will run in Kolar as his second constituency, Mr. Shivakumar stated that the former chief minister had only applied for one seat. The second district may be determined by the Election Committee of the party.
