Karnataka polls next year: Rahul Gandhi meets Congress leaders, urges unity to get back to power

The meeting came amid a raging controversy in the state over barring Muslim girls in hijab from entering schools and colleges. Both the Congress central leadership and its state unit had been treading cautiously on the issue.

Thursday’s meeting, sources said, was to brainstorm on the broader strategies ahead of the Assembly elections next summer. Rahul, sources said, was clear: he asked the leaders to work unitedly. The discord between Siddaramaiah and Shivakumar has been a recurring theme of Karnataka Congress for some time.

The meeting was attended by 21 senior leaders from the state, including Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge, former Union minister M Veerappa Moily and Leader of Opposition in Karnataka Legislative Council B K Hariprasad. After the meeting, AICC general secretary in charge of the state, Randeep Surjewala, said the party would restart its 100-km ‘Mekedatu Yatra’ from February 27.

The party had stopped the yatra in January in view of the rising Covid-19 cases, and after some of its leaders contracted the disease. Surjewala said the party has also decided to launch a series of protests highlighting unemployment, price-rise, corruption and scams in Karnataka.

“We had a detailed discussion on the state of political affairs in Karnataka. How the (Basavaraj) Bommai government is mired in deep-rooted corruption, it is a 40 per cent tender commission government and how the crypto-currency scam has reached the highest echelons of power and the government being completely mum,” Surjewala told reporters.