Rahul, Shah to give final push for parties

Top leaders of all three political parties — the Congress, the BJP and the JD(S) — went on a high-pitched campaign on Wednesday — considered the penultimate day of electioneering.

While Prime Minister Narendra Modi blazed through Kolar, Chikkamagaluru, Belagavi and Bidar, presidents of the three parties — Amit Shah, Rahul Gandhi and H D Kumaraswamy — spent their day criss-crossing Bengaluru’s streets. 

Despite having extensively campaigned these last few weeks, prominent leaders of the two national parties are still not done with it.

As campaigning ends at 5 pm on Thursday, they were scheduled to wrap up their electioneering on Wednesday.

However, the leaders decided to pitch for their parties one last time before leaving.

Rahul, who has camped in the state (on and off) for the last two months, was scheduled to leave Karnataka late on May 9. But he changed his mind and stayed in the night in the city.

The Congress scion, who was supposed to fly out of HAL airport to New Delhi, took a last-minute call to campaign for his party candidates in Hubballi. He will also address the media in Bengaluru. Likewise, Shah too will campaign for BJP candidate Sriramulu at Badami on Thursday.

Modi, who concluded his high-pitched campaign on Wednesday night, will address SC/ST/OBC and Slum Morcha karyakartas at 9 am on Thursday via the Narendra Modi app.

Not just that, nearly half of Modi’s Cabinet, along with chief ministers of BJP-ruled states, will take out mega roadshows in all Assembly segments of Bengaluru.

Leaders like Raman Singh, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Nirmala Sitharaman, Meenakshi Lekhi, J P Nadda, Piyush Goyal, Dharmendra Pradhan, Suresh Prabhu and Tawarchand Gehlot will take part.