During the BJP National executive on Mondy, Prime Minister Narendra Modi met with BS Yediyurappa, former Chief Minister of Karnataka which is inching close to elections. According to media reports, the 15-minute-long meeting between the Prime Minister and the four times chief minister has created a buzz about a turn in Yediyurappa's fate and role in the state assembly polls this year.
The ongoing Two-day party executive meeting in New Delhi was attended by top leaders and ministers, including Modi, to strategize for the polling in nine states. Yediyurappa, who holds a good base of Lingayat supporters in Karnataka has kept a low profile since the party's decision to remove him from the top post in the state. However, as the state prepares for elections this year, the party has elevated the strong candidate to the parliamentary board, the party's highest decision-making body, reported NDTV.
The party and central leadership is banking on the popularity and experience of former CM and three-time opposition leader to win the upcoming 2024 Assembly elections in Karnataka. The Lingayats comprise approximately17 per cent of the total population, thus accounting for the single largest community in the state, mostly in the northern region. The Lingayats are also traditional BJP voters.
"Lingayat votes hold the key for our party and without a doubt, BSY is one of our most popular Lingayat faces and we are banking on him to take the saffron surge forward," a top BJP leader told ANI.
Union Home Minister and BJP's key strategist Amit Shah has assigned the party's Karnataka unit with 'Mission 136', which is winning 136 seats out of 224. Reaching this aim can be a monumental task for BJP as Congress has good ground-level support in the state.
Meanwhile, Yediyurappa's successor and the current Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai, has made the news headlines for mostly wrong reasons than right. Bommai's tenure as the Chief Minister last year has been anything but rock solid as the opposition charged him with corruption allegations and launched the PayCM campaign. The party however has held that the state will go to polls under Bommai's leadership, thus making room for no alterations.
Following the collapse of the alliance by Congres and HD Kumaraswamy's Janata Dal-Secular, the BJP resumed power in the state for a third time. The ruling alliance had accused BJP of conducting 'Operation Lotus', poaching its MLAs, and toppling the elected government, as per NDTV.
