Session strategy, rebel trouble & waqf row on agenda of Karnataka BJP leaders’ meet today

BJP state president B Y Vijayendra has convened a meeting of the party’s senior leaders on Tuesday to discuss three key issues.

They are: Matters that need to be raised to counter the treasury benches at the legislature session in Belagavi, charting out a detailed programme for the party’s agitation against the alleged takeover of lands by the Waqf Board and seeking advice from the party’s senior leaders on tackling the BJP rebel group led by Basanagouda Patil Yatnal.

The meeting will also discuss the BJP’s loss in the byelections to three Assembly seats recently.

Leaders of the Opposition R Ashoka, Chalavadi Narayanaswamy, former chief ministers B S Yediyurappa, D V Sadananda Gowda and others will take part in Tuesday’s meeting.

Party sources told DH that the Shiggaon loss should be seen as a message that supporters of Yediyurappa won’t take kindly to the veteran being targeted at regular intervals.

“Yatnal campaigned in Shiggaon and attacked Yediyurappa, which played a role in Bharat Bommai’s defeat there. The party’s senior leaders should rein in the anti-Yediyurappa camp,” the sources said.

The party top brass will also have to take cognisance of a parallel protest over the waqf issue by the Yatnal-led group in Bidar, they said.

The sources said that the BJP needed to groom second rung leaders from other backward communities and Dalits in order to win elections in future.

‘Groom OBC, Dalit leaders’

“If we have to take any cue from the defeats in Channapatna and Shiggaon seats, it is that we cannot depend only on Vokkaliga and Lingayat votes. We have to groom leaders from OBC and Dalit communities. Leaders like Chitradurga MP Govind Karjol are aging. We have to scout for new talents and groom them for the next three years to win elections, including those to the local bodies,” they said.

Yatnal-led group holds parallel waqf stir in Bidar

The rebel group of the BJP led by Bijapur legislator Basanagouda Patil Yatnal held a ‘parallel agitation’ over the waqf issue here, reports DHNS from Bidar.

MLAs Ramesh Jarkiholi, B P Harish, leaders Aravind Limbavali, Kumar Bangarappa and G M Siddeshwara and others are part of the group. Party leader Prakash Khandre and JD(S) leader Bandeppa Kashempur were also present at the protest rally.

None of the local party leaders, except Eshwar Singh Thakur, joined the agitation.

As the rebel group took out a rally, supporters of Bidar South MLA Shailendra K Beldale raised slogans against Yatnal and his supporters for taking out the rally.

In fact, BJP district president Somanath Patil filed a complaint with the police and the city corporation commissioner Shivaraj Rathod over the posters and banners put up unofficially regarding the rally in the city. He said the party had nothing to do with the agitation and that the publicity material should be removed.

The complaint also sought action against ‘those misusing the party’s name’. However, Rathod told DH that permission had been sought to put up the banners and so, they couldn’t be removed.

The rebel group submitted a memorandum to the deputy commissioner, demanding that the word waqf should be removed from the RTC documents of farmers, wherever there is such a mention.