Former Chief Minister of Karnataka Jagadish Shettar, who recently joined the Congress, said here on Saturday, June 10, that the BJP was under the clutches of a handful of people and it would reap the same results in the Parliamentary elections as in the Assembly elections.
Speaking at a seminar organised by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Research and Extension Centre of the University of Mysore, Mr. Shettar said that he had made this remark when he quit the party before the elections and nothing seems to have changed since then and it is certain the party would suffer another loss in the coming elections.
The BJP’s growth in Karnataka, he said, was due to a strong network of workers and local leadership which helped it to sustain the momentum provided by the Ayodhya movement in the 1990s while in other southern States it had little impact as there was no State leadership there. ‘’To believe that one could win elections on the Hindutva plank and the image of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the Parliamentary elections and local leadership or local issues was not required, was a mistake for which the BJP will pay,’’ he added.
