West Graduate's seat: BJP at advantage

HUBBALLI: With voting for the West Graduate Constituency scheduled for Wednesday, the BJP is confident of clinching a hat-trick here, but Congress and JDS too are putting up a tough fight to upset the saffron party plans. Though it looks like a triangular contest here, the BJP is a formidable force on the ground.

In fact, there is every reason for the BJP to be confident as it has a widespread workers’ network.

Each party worker has been assigned six voters with whom they had to communicate constantly to bring them to polling booths and vote for their candidate S V Sankanur, who is eyeing a second consecutive win.

The party also has more number of elected representatives in the Assembly and Lok Sabha. Of the 23 Assembly segments under the constituency, the BJP has 19 MLAs and all the four MPs. Moreover, the party is in power this time.

Senior party leader Jagadish Shettar said that despite not being in power in the last election, the BJP candidate won by a margin of 14,000 votes. “The winning margin of Sankanur may cross 25,000 votes this time,” he added.

But such confidence is missing among candidates from other parties, including Congress’ R M Kuberappa. The JDS has forced its candidate to retire from the contest and is backing an independent, Basavaraj Gurikar. It is now a battle between Sankanur, Kuberappa and Gurikar, though 11 candidates are in fray.

Gurikar, who was heading the state unit of government primary school teachers’ association before retiring, hopes that Basavaraj Horatti, a seven-time JDS MLC, will transfer the votes in his favour.