'Ensure Surya's victory by over 3 lakh votes'

BJP’s campaign in-charge R Ashoka on Monday gave a clarion call to the party’s cadre to ensure that its Bangalore South candidate Tejasvi Surya wins by a margin of over three lakh votes in the upcoming Lok Sabha election.

In a show of unity, all BJP legislators from the Bangalore South Lok Sabha constituency - Ashoka (Padmanabhanagar), V Somanna (Govindaraj Nagar), LA Ravi Subramanya (Basavanagudi), Satish Reddy (Bommanahalli) and Uday Garudachar (Chickpet) were present with Surya for a meeting to discuss Tuesday’s massive road show by the party’s national president Amit Shah.

Bangalore South MLA M Krishnappa was also present, but his assembly segment comes under the Bangalore Rural Lok Sabha seat. The meeting was also attended by 62 of the party’s ward councillors and other grassroots-level workers.

In 2014, the late Union minister Ananth Kumar had defeated Congress’ Nandan Nilekani by a margin of 2.28 lakh votes. This time, the Congress has fielded its senior leader B K Hariprasad who had lost against Ananth Kumar in 1999. Hariprasad is an old-time Bengalurean. 

Both Ashoka and Somanna had earlier expressed their unhappiness over Surya getting the ticket whereas it was Tejaswini, Ananth Kumar's wife, who was the frontrunner. “The grouse is not with Surya, but with a section of RSS leaders who undermined the state BJP leadership in denying Tejaswini the ticket,” a source said.