Amit Shah asks Karnataka unit to increase vote share by 10%

BJP state president B Y Vijayendra told reporters that strategies were charted to gain a 10 per cent increase in votes at every booth in the state. Talks were also held to convert Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s popularity to votes, he said.

“All our leaders have assured our home minister that the BJP and the JD(S) will fight all 28 Lok Sabha constituencies unitedly, and we will put 100 per cent effort to win all 28 Lok Sabha seats,” Vijayendra said.

The Union home minister chaired the Karnataka BJP core committee meeting, followed by a meeting of BJP’s Mysuru Lok Sabha cluster – consisting of representatives from Mysuru, Chamarajanagar, Mandya, and Hassan segments.

The constituencies fall under the Old-Mysore region, where the BJP is looking to make gains with help from its coalition partner JD(S). The regional party under former PM H D Deve Gowda is looking to contest from at least two of the four above-mentioned constituencies.

When asked about the JD(S) not being a party to meetings chaired by the Union minister, JD(S) Youth Wing president Nikhil Kumaraswamy said JD(S) leader H D Kumaraswamy could not meet Shah due to health reasons. “He is under rest. That is why Kumaraswamy is not meeting Amit Shah,” he said, adding Kumaraswamy had communicated the same to Shah.

On seat-sharing between the BJP and the JD(S), Vijayendra said that the issue was not discussed in the meeting. “A decision will be arrived at after meetings of senior leaders of the party in Delhi,” he said.

The BJP’s vote share in the last two Lok Sabha polls in Karnataka was 43.4 per cent (2014) and 51.38 per cent (2019). The saffron party’s vote share in the 2018 and 2023 Assembly polls in the state was 36.35 per cent and 36 per cent, respectively.