Bengaluru, May 7 The BJP is hoping to wrest most of the 28 Assembly seats in Bengaluru following the two-day mega roadshow of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the city.
PM Modi's second day roadshow in Bengaluru is happening on Sunday.
BJP is rooted strongly in Bengaluru, though its base is considered as weak in south Karnataka region. BJP won 15 seats in the last elections in the IT city. With PM Modi's unprecedented outreach, the saffron party is hoping to win at least 20 seats in Bengaluru alone.
Congress holds 12 seats and JD(S) had won one seat in Bengaluru in last Assembly polls. After 'Operation Lotus', BJP has got Vokkaliga faces and leadership in the state. PM Modi had inaugurated the 108-ft tall Nadaprabhu Kempe Gowda statue in the premises of Bengaluru International Airport in November last year, and had also inaugurated a new metro line in the state capital.
Apart from denying tickets to senior leader Arvind Limbavali and allotting ticket to his wife, the BJP had not done experiments with allotment of tickets in the city. Minister for Housing V. Somanna, who represented the Govindaraja Nagar Assembly constituency, has been given the task of defeating Opposition leader Siddaramaiah. He is contesting from Varuna seat in Mysuru district and Chamarajanagar seat in Chamarajanagar district. In Govindarajanagar, the party has fielded Umesh Shetty, a former corporator as its candidate.
The BJP wants to recover the Jayanagar seat, which it had lost to Congress. After the demise of MLA B.N. Vijaykumar, Congress wrested the seat. Powerful Congress leader Ramalinga Reddy's daughter, Sowmya Reddy, had defeated the BJP candidate.
She had won with a thin margin of 2,887 votes against BJP candidate B.N. Prahlad, brother of late MLA Vijaykumar. The constituency has a major chunk of Muslim votes. BJP has fielded loyal party worker C.K. Rammurthy this time. Sowmya Reddy is seeking election for the second time.
PM Modi's roadshow covered 29.8 kms on Saturday. The response of the people throughout the stretch has made the BJP camp joyful, and is hopeful of achieving the target. The campaign blitzkrieg by PM Modi has helped BJP to erase the bitter memories of failure of infrastructure during the flood situation last year in the IT city, sources in BJP said.
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