New Delhi: Around 70 AICC observers, deployed by party president Mallikarjun Kharge, are going door-to-door across assembly constituencies to mop up the extra votes in tightly-contested Karnataka polls.
The AICC observers, including senior leaders, MLAs, MPs, and former ministers have not only taken their poll-fighting experience to the ground, they are also playing a crucial role to ensure the victory of party nominees, even if by a narrow margin. The party ran an aggressive campaign in 2018 but could win only 80 out of 224 seats and was then forced to offer the chief minister’s post to JD-S, which had only 37 MLAs to keep the BJP (104) out of power. This time the party is aiming for a simple majority of its own. Hence, the micro-management of the assembly constituencies, said a party insider.
Initially, 66 AICC observers were named. Out of them, five senior leaders ex-PCC chief N Raghuveera Reddy, ex-Mumbai unit chief Sanjay Nirupam, MPs Benny Behanan, Karti Chidambaram and Jothimani have been deployed for capital Bengaluru City alone, which has roughly 25 assembly seats. The remaining 61 observers were assigned other assembly seats. Later, Kharge had deployed five region-wise observers to oversee the campaign in the state.
The basic idea is to let the observers do the talking about the issues affecting the voters and inform them about the five guarantees like an allowance for women, unemployed youth and free ration for BPL families. Over the past few days, Sanjay Nirupam has been interacting with the residents of various housing societies in the Anekal area in Bangalore south, especially those working in the IT sector. Later, he also went door to door in the rural parts of the Anekal constituency to ask for votes in favour of sitting MLA and candidate Sivanna.
Nirupam also had an interaction over lunch with the representatives of the restaurant owners’ association in the capital city which has around 24,000 restaurants to discuss the issues being faced by them. He also addressed gatherings of locals in the Sarvagya Nagar area and met with the members of the Mantri Tranquil apartment in Bengaluru South to convince the voters. Later he was also facilitated by the Rajasthani community in the Chickpet area and had a meeting with party workers in the Mahadevapura constituency.
“There is tremendous support for the Congress,” Nirupam told ETV Bharat. Similarly, AICC Secretary Qazi Mohammad Nizamuddin had been touring the Belgaum area to mobilize support for the party. “This is a very crucial election for the party and every vote counts. When we go and meet the locals, not only the workers get a boost, the voters also open up to the party. We don’t want to lose even a single vote in any constituency,” Nizamuddin told this channel.
Qazi also met the locals in the Khanapur constituency in Belgaum area in favour of party candidate Anjali Nimbalkar and also inducted the BJP and JD-S local leaders into the party fold. On May 5, Karti had coffee at the popular The Rameshwaram Café in CV Raman Nagar area along with party workers and locals. Earlier, he interacted with the locals at the BTM Layout area and also campaigned for party candidate from Byatarayanapura seat Krishna Byre Gowda on May 3.
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