Congress wants to come to power through anarchy: Kateel

Karnataka BJP president Nalin Kumar Kateel on Saturday accused the Congress of “creating anarchy” to come to power, but asserted that the saffron party will woo voters based on works done by its governments in the state and centre.

“Congress is misleading people by trying to bring a bad name to the government. They are lighting the fire of communalism,” Kateel told a news conference.

Kateel hit out at the Congress for its role in the 2020 DJ Halli-KG Halli riots, the Hubballi violence, the Shivamogga scuffle, the Hijab controversy and other incidents.

“The Congress’ strategy is to misuse its power as the Opposition party, stoke fires and come to power by creating anarchy,” Kateel said. The BJP leader said the Congress introduced terrorism and corruption in India.

“Who created Bhindranwale? How did Dawood Ibrahim flee the country? And between Nehru and Manmohan Singh, India has seen scams worth Rs 4 lakh crore. Congress is the other name for corruption,” he charged.

“It is the same mindset that was at work during the DJ Halli-KG Halli riots in which a Congress MLA was attacked by Congressmen. And, the Congressmen in jail haven’t been expelled still,” Kateel said.

Masterplan

Kateel said the BJP is working on a masterplan to win 150 seats in the 2023 Assembly polls. The party has already formed three teams - one headed by Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai, another under former CM BS Yediyurappa and BJP national general secretary Arun Singh and a third with former CM Jagadish Shettar and Kateel.

“We want government schemes to reach people and for them to get talked about at the booth-level,” Kateel said. “Last year, we had one Pramukh for every page on the voter list. Now, we will have a committee of six people for every page. We’ve achieved 60-70% progress in this,” he said.

To verify the functioning of the page committees, Kateel said the BJP is counting on its Vistarak programme. “Under this, our Vistaraks find out if government schemes have reached people or not. They will also verify the page committees and we’ve had an 80% success so far,” he said.

The party is also empowering booth committee presidents. “Our strength lies in the booth committee, which is a key part of our poll machinery. As an experiment, our MLAs are visiting the homes of the booth committee presidents to give that leader some form of recognition,” Kateel said.

The BJP, Kateel said, is assessing the party’s strengths and weaknesses, including anti-incumbency faced by some of its MLAs. “We are also discussing how we can improve in the Old Mysuru region - Hassan, Bengaluru, Chikballapur and Kolar,” he said.

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