Unfazed by cases, Rahul Gandhi to address rally in Karnataka’s Kolar April 16

Rahul, who has alleged that his sentencing and disqualification was part of a BJP’s agenda to target him, is expected to attack the saffron party during his speech in Kolar on April 16 as he has been doing in the past, reports ETV Bharat's Amit Agnihotri.

New Delhi: After thanking the voters of his former parliamentary constituency Wayanad in Kerala on April 11, the former Congress president Rahul Gandhi will address a big rally in poll-bound Karnataka’s Kolar on April 16.

“There is a lot of excitement in the Congress over Rahulji’s visit to Kolar. The party campaign is on and is going very well. All the senior state leaders, including state unit chief DK Shiv Kumar and CLP leader K Siddaramaiah, will attend the April 16 rally,” senior state leader BK Hari Prasad told ETV Bharat. Kolar, incidentally, is the place where Rahul had made his controversial remark over Modi surname which led to his conviction and sentencing in a criminal defamation case by a Surat court and later resulted in his disqualification from the Lok Sabha.

Rahul, who has alleged that his sentencing and disqualification was part of a BJP’s agenda to target him, is expected to attack the saffron party during his speech in Kolar on April 16 as he has been doing in the past, said party insiders, adding that the Wayanad visit was meant to showcase the leader’s connect with the voters.

According to Congress veteran Anand Sharma, “The manner in which Rahul Gandhi was disqualified has sent a wrong message. If the same standards were applied to the speeches of other leaders, the Parliament would be empty." So far, the way things are going for the Congress in the poll-bound state, shows that the grand old party has an edge over its rivals BJP and JD-S, said party insiders.

While Sharma predicted the “Congress will certainly win Karnataka,” Hari Prasad said, “The Congress is more confident than the BJP and the JD-S.” “There is chaos in the BJP over ticket distribution, while we not only announced tickets early, the exercise has been smooth so far,” said Hari Prasad. According to party insiders, Rahul’s rally was earlier scheduled on April 10 but got postponed as the party wanted to finalise all the tickets before that.

Given that the party still has to clear around 30 odd seats, party insiders said the exercise would be completed soon. The former chief minister and CLP leader K Siddaramaiah met Rahul in Delhi ahead of his Wayanad visit to discuss the ticket distribution, party campaign, and the upcoming Kolar rally. Over the past few days, Rahul had been spending long hours during the CEC meetings to clear the party candidates for the May 10 assembly polls.

Last year, Rahul had given a target of 150 seats to the state unit but of late Karnataka Congress president DK Shiv Kumar has been claiming the party would easily win 130 seats. As per norms, the party needs 113 seats to get a simple majority in the House of 224 members. “The 40 percent commission BJP government in Karnataka will be limited to less than 40 seats. The people will not pardon the state government. There is conflict and chaos in the BJP. In contrast, there has been no conflict in the Congress over the past two years. The Congress is the most united in Karnataka,” AICC in-charge Karnataka Randeep Surjewala said.