After the two-day-long meeting with booth-level Congress workers and leaders from Varuna Assembly constituency in Mysuru district on Sunday and Monday, former Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said similar exercises will be held across the State to strengthen the party in the wake of the reverses in the recent Lok Sabha polls.
He took to Twitter on Tuesday and said the campaign to strengthen the Congress will not be restricted to Varuna constituency. “I’m not worried about Varuna. After the defeat in the elections, this activity is being held across the State by party leaders. In the coming days, the exercise will be conducted in a more systematic manner.”
Mr. Siddaramaiah, who has already ruled out midterm polls, is believed to have carried out a detailed analysis of the votes polled in each of the 263 booths of Varuna constituency by holding discussions with the 13-member committee constituted for each booth.
Inroads by BJP
Meanwhile, sources in the Congress, who attended the meeting, said the leaders noted with dismay the inroads made by the Bharatiya Janata Party in Varuna constituency, which is part of Chamarajanagar Lok Sabha segment from where Mr. Siddaramaiah’s bitter critic V. Srinivas Prasad was elected.
While Mr. Siddaramaiah won by a margin of more than 29,000 votes during the Assembly elections of 2013, his son Yathindra had widened the margin by more than 58,000 votes in 2018.
Congress candidate for Chamarajanagar Lok Sabha seat R. Dhruvanarayan, who had maintained a lead of more than 33,000 votes during the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, saw the lead plummet to a mere 9,002 votes in Varuna segment during the recent elections.
Sources privy to the discussions at the review meeting revealed that the main reason for Mr. Dhruvanarayan’s loss was the shift in a large chunk of Dalit votes. Mr. Prasad, who earlier represented the constituency five times, managed to attract these voters.
The Congress lost the Dalit votes not only to BJP, but also to Bahujan Samaj Party, whose candidate secured more than 87,000 votes in the elections.
The exercise also revealed that the Modi factor too made an impact on the electorate, which led to small sections of Ahinda, including even the Kurubas and other microscopic communities, rallying around the BJP.