Bengaluru: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will formally kickstart the BJP's Lok Sabha election campaign in two southern states, Karnataka and Telangana, on Saturday.
The PM will start his move from Congress President M Mallikarjun Kharge's home turf, Kalaburagi, and then address another rally in Telangana's Nagarkurnool the same day.
He is slated to address a mega public meeting at the district headquarters town's N V Ground at around 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.