Congress launches an ineffective coastal push to its campaign

Sullia: Finally when the Congress leaders in the state decided that they must have a regional avatar of the state-wide campaign -entitled Praja Dhwani yatra and called it 'Karavali Dhwani Yatra' there was an all-round optimism that this campaign event might even help the Congress party to regain the lost popularity on the coast of Karnataka to some extent. But it was not to be, to a great extent! Thanks to the ageing warhorses and fatigued leaders the yatra left much to be desired.

The Karnataka in-charge general secretary Randeep Surjewala had spoken to The Hans India during one of his visits to Mangaluru. He was very clear about the vision of the party for riding the surf that was created by the iconic Padayatra undertaken by Rahul Gandhi's Bharat Jodo Yatra' (BJY). Surjewala wanted a micro-level event taking the same spirit as BJY to the coastal region of Karnataka and Malnad.

Call it the erosion of the cadres or the Sunday laziness, the Karavali Dhwani Yatra evoked a lukewarm response from the general public of Sullia -the launching pad of this campaign. In four places -Sullia town, Nelyadi, Guthigar and Bellare Cross Road, a total of 1200 people visited and 90 per cent of them the workers of the Congress party. This was not what the party leaders expected. The clear mandate of the campaign event was to reach more voters than the Congress cadres.

Though there were state-level leaders like BK Hariprasad -leader of the opposition in the legislative council and MLC, UT Khadar MLA and deputy leader of the opposition in the legislative assembly, 6 times MLA RV Deshpande, 6 times MLA B Ramanatha Rai and General secretary KPCC Saleem Ahmed, all of them more or less ran out of issues to highlight during the four stop yatra in Sullia. They revolved around a few recent developments like the 40 per cent commission complaints, and the recent sops that the Congress party offered -Rs. 2000 for each family headed by a woman, and 200 units of free electricity to each household in the state.

For some reason, the virulent and definite Hindutva polarisation was not given adequate exposure during the yatra by the speakers. There were issues of political murders allegedly engineered by the Hindutva fringe groups on the coast. They conveniently forgot the hyper-local issues and dwelt more on the national and state issues. The alleged failures of the Modi government were under focus, which has already been done by the larger -Prajadwhani yatra at Mangaluru which was addressed by Randeep Singh Surgewala, S Siddaramiah and DK Shivakumar just two weeks back in Mangaluru.

The Karavali Dhwani Yatra will visit the Mulky Moodbidri Assembly Constituency on Monday and workers and district-level leaders expect the speakers to dwell extensively on local issues.