04-25-2008, 11:49 PM
Will Gujarat model click in State?
B.S. Satish Kumar
Language teams in BJP campaign
BANGALORE: The Bharatiya Janata Party is set to replicate its Gujarat model with respect to âlinguistic campaign teamsâ in the coming Assembly elections in Karnataka. The party State unit is getting over 1,000 of its members from six different language-speaking States to make an appeal to their respective linguistic communities to vote for the BJP.
These select party workers are from Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Goa, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Rajasthan.
The BJP organising secretaries in these States have chosen 100 to 150 workers from their States for such a plea to the linguistic communities. These language campaign teams, headed by the party State organising secretaries, will work according to a plan.
The party has conducted an informal survey in about 80 Assembly constituencies to know the areas where the linguistic communities reside in a big number.
Accordingly, each of these linguistic campaign teams would camp in the areas inhabited by their linguistic communities.
For example, the Telugu-speaking campaign team from Andhra Pradesh will mainly tour Kolar, parts of Tumkur and Bangalore Rural districts. They would mainly undertake a door-to-door campaign in the areas of Telugu-speaking people and make an appeal to them in Telugu to support the BJP.
For the Hindi-speaking team from Rajasthan, the BJP local unit has chalked out a plan for campaigning in the business areas of Chickpet, Gandhinagar and other neighbouring constituencies which have a sizeable number of Hindi-speaking people.
The party thinks that in a cosmopolitan city such as Bangalore, the campaign by specific linguistic groups will have an impact.
BJP Bangalore city secretary A.L. Shivakumar, who is co-ordinating with these linguistic campaign groups, told The Hindu that the campaign by these specific groups would begin from April 28. Each group would camp in the State for 10 to 12 days. Already, the campaign team from Kerala has arrived in Bangalore and is planning its campaign in the areas which have a large number of Malayalam-speaking people. Will the Gujarat model click in Karnataka?