Show of strength
It was a show of strength by the State BJPat the third leg of Nava Karnataka Nirmana Parivarthan Yatra at Vijayanagar in Bengaluru on Sunday. The venue - Balagangadharanath Swami Grounds - was overflowing with people and even spilled on to the streets. It is estimated that nearly 40,000 people attended the convention. The BJPhad hired hundreds of buses, both private and those belonging to the Bengaluru Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC), to ferry the crowd.
Loudspeakers had been placed outside the grounds too. "Today, people in a five-km radius of the Grounds (in Vijayanagar and Govindarajanagar) will hear only one speech - that of Yogi Adityanath,"Union Minister Ananth Kumar said.
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Boisterous crowd
Adiyanath received huge applause and cheers from the crowd when he arrived at the venue of the convention. They chanted "Modi-Yogi, Modi-Yogi". He got the loudest response when he gave the "Bharat Mata Ki Jai"call. Yogi read the opening part of the speech in Kannada, much to the delight of the crowd.
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(photo available)
PM lookalike a hit
A lookalike of Prime Minister Narendra Modi grabbed the attention of the people at the BJPconvention. Clad in a saffron kurta replete with a turban, the lookalike was paraded in an open jeep at the venue. He greeted the people with folded hands and the resemblance was quite striking. In another incident, MLC and former minister Ramachandra Gowda walked away in a huff as he found that no seating arrangement had been made for him on the dais.
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Lunch at Mutt
The Uttar Pradesh chief minister had lunch at the Adichunchanagiri Mutt at Vijayanagar along with Mutt seer Nirmalanandanath Swami, before returning to Lucknow. Adichunchanagiri Mutt has close links with Gorakhnath Mutt in Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, where Adityanath was the head priest. Both Mutts follow the Nath pantha, a sub-tradition of Shaivism.
