Former Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Saturday held a meeting with party leaders of Mysuru and the neighbouring Chamarajanagar districts to analyse the reasons behind the party’s waning popularity in the region and chalk out a strategy to make the party more acceptable to the people by the next Assembly elections.
Sitting MLAs, former MLAs, and party candidates from all 15 Assembly constituencies of Mysuru and Chamarajanagar districts were part of the brainstorming session at a hotel in the city.
Mr. Siddaramaiah reportedly expressed concern over the declining number of seats the Congress was winning in the two districts. Against the 11 seats the party won out of the 15 constituencies in both the districts during the 2008 Assembly elections, the party won 11 in the 2013 Assembly elections before coming down to just 5 during 2018.
Mr. Siddaramaiah felt that party workers and leaders had failed to carry out enough publicity of the programmes and schemes of the Congress government among the public. Trivial issues had hogged the limelight in the media at the cost of the pro-people programmes implemented by the Congress government under Mr Siddaramaiah’s leadership, he said.
Also, political adversaries, who were jealous of him returning to the Chief Minister’s post, had succeeded in projecting him as “anti-Lingayat” and “anti-Vokkaliga” and the party leaders had failed to check this misinformation campaign. He regretted that his adversaries had even tried to project him as “anti-Dalit” despite his programmes for the community.
He rued that the proposal to extend the status of a religion to Lingayats was taken by his government only at the behest Lingayat organisations and Mutt heads and unfortunately, the same organisations and Mutt heads, who had spearheaded the movement, did not back the government’s move.
Mr. Siddaramaiah was also disillusioned by the pro-BJP tilt of the media and felt the need to properly educate and create awareness among people about the “omissions and commissions of the BJP government”.
He emphasised the need for party leaders to carry out awareness programmes through demonstrations and protests against “anti-people” projects of the BJP government. He called upon all party leaders, who had enjoyed power during the Congress rule, to speak out against the BJP’s “misrule”.
Most sitting MLAs, including Anil Chikkamadu from H.D. Kote, Puttaranga Shetty from Chamarajanagar, R. Narendra from Hanur, Yathindra, R. Dhruvanarayan, former MP, H.C. Mahadevappa, former Minister, and former MLAs Venkatesh and Vasu were among the leaders present in the meeting.
