Top Cong leaders to make a beeline for the coast

Bengaluru: Over 40 leaders of the Congress party, including young, old, and veterans, will participate in the public meeting at the Karavali exhibition grounds on January 22. Apart from Siddaramiah, the Opposition party leader, KPCC president DK Shivakumar, top leaders like M Veerappa Moily, Randeep Surjewala, and many others are attending. The highlight will be the participation of B Janardhana Poojary, the last surviving Nehru-Gandhi family confidante. According to the sources, Poojary despite being confined to a wheelchair is in high spirits and readily agreed to participate in the public meeting.

Another highlight of the public meeting is that Ashok Rai, one of the close confidantes of former union minister and BJP government Sadananda Gowda will be joining the BJP along with 1500 of his followers from the BJP. The special feature of this public meeting will receive a boost when MG Hegade well-known writer and a leader of the Brahmin community will also join the Congress party. It could be recalled here that the Congress party has only handful of leaders from the Brahmin community and from the Goud Saraswat Brahmin community. Talks are also going on to rope in many liberal Hindutva activists, their names have been kept out of the public glare and is supposed to surprise, say the party leaders.

Bolstered by the response the party has been receiving from all over the state the Congress leaders have scaled up their efforts to reclaim the coast by increasing their numbers in the assembly from the coastal leaders. It is also interesting to learn that the Congress party has trained the minds of its leaders to be more secular than ever by making its cadres and leadership more inclusive. Towards the elections, the Congress party will be inducting more people. It could also be recalled here that just earlier this week Prime Minister Narendra Modi had advised the party leader BS Yeddyurappa that he must take the people from the minority community into confidence and make the party cadres more inclusive.