Karnataka poll capsule

Rahul Gandhi to resume canvassing in state

AICC president Rahul Gandhi, who had taken a break from campaigning, will resume canvassing for his party in poll-bound Karnataka from May 3.

While Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be addressing a rally in Bengaluru on Thursday, Rahul will be spending an entire day in Bidar.

Rahul will arrive in the district at 11.30 am by a chopper and is expected to hold back-to-back corner meetings in Aurad, Bhalki, Humnabad and Bidar. He will leave for Kalaburagi on May 4.

He will take part in a public meeting at Kalgi in Kalaburagi and will return to Bidar by the chopper. From Bidar, he is scheduled to take a special flight to Hubballi. Once there, he will take a chopper to Gajendragad at Ron in Gadag district, where he will hold a corner meeting. After that, he is scheduled to attend a corner meeting and a road show in Shiggaon in Haveri district. Rahul will return to New Delhi
the same night.

Congress brands BJP as ‘Brasht Janardhan Party’

Branding the BJP as ‘Brasht Janardhan Party’, the Congress on Tuesday said that the party’s list comprised ‘dented and tainted leaders’, who were facing criminal charges at multiple levels.

The Congress demanded that the prime minister, who is in Karnataka, speak up on why his party had given tickets to such leaders.

Addressing the media in Bengaluru, Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said the Modi-Shah duo was walking on the ‘clutches of corruption’ — with ‘Yeddy’ gang on one side and the ‘Reddy’ gang on the other.

Stating that the ‘Republic of Ballari’ had the blessings of Modi, Surjewala said the Modi government had gone to great lengths to put a lid on the illegal iron ore mining scam. He said the CBI had worked overtime to wash the sins of Janardhan Reddy and his brothers. “The CBI has surreptitiously withdrawn six CBI cases in Goa-Karnataka-Tamil Nadu pertaining to Rs 35,000 crore iron ore mining scam.”

He said the party had given tickets to leaders like B Sriramulu, Somashekar Reddy, T H Suresh Babu, Katta Subramanya Naidu, C T Ravi, Murugesh Nirani, Krishnaiah Setty and R Ashoka, who had cases against them.