Mumbai team to help BJP with Karnataka polls

Mumbai: A team of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) workers from Mumbai is in Bengaluru to help the party in the forthcoming Karnataka Assembly elections, on the directives of party national chief Amit Shah.

The 47-member team with the party’s Mumbai chief Ashish Shelar at the helm had helped the party win 15 of the 16 seats in Surat district in the tough Gujarat Assembly elections.

“We are disciplined party workers. Wherever the party leadership would ask us to go, we will go and give our best. We are confident that Bengaluru will stand with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s development agenda,” said Mr Shelar from Bengaluru on phone.

Mr Shelar was Mr Shah’s point man for Surat during the 2017 election. Surat was a tough challenge for the BJP as Patidar youths and traders had staged agitations against the party and its government. The party assigned Mr Shelar the task of reaching out to every corner of the city and creating confidence in the voters’ mind about the party’s agenda. The BJP swept all the 12 seats in the city.

Now the BJP leadership wants the team to repeat the show in Karnataka where the battle seems tough.

Mr Shelar and his team will look after Bengaluru city and the surrounding areas. He will also supervise the campaign in four Lok Sabha constituencies in western Karnataka.

The election in the southern state is expected to set the tone for the upcoming polls in four states in December. Both, the BJP and the Congress will decide their next move after seeing the Karnataka results.