BELLARY:

NarendraModi and Rahul Gandhi may both be aspirants for the job of prime minister, but neither is apparently keen on Karnataka as a proving ground before an eventual showdown in the general election. Karnataka, which elects a new government on May 5, is the first state to go to the polls since Modi and Rahul Gandhi soft-launched their campaigns by making their cases in front of industry bodies, but both of them are treading very softly in Karnataka.

The Bharatiya Janata Party, which came to power for the first time in a southern state in 2008, is almost certain to lose the election, laid low by a series of corruption and sex scandals as well as a splintering of the party. The faction-ridden Congress is regarded as the frontrunner, but if it wins a majority in the 224-member assembly it will be because of a negative vote against the BJP, analysts believe. Moreover, Karnataka has the habit of bucking the national political trend. All of which mean that the men-who-would-be-prime minister have little incentive to assiduously woo the state's 4.4 crore voters.

Expectedly, Modi is in big demand among candidates, but the chief minister of Gujarat has consented to just one day of campaigning in Karnataka on April 28. Karnataka's chief minister Jagdish Shettar is being embarrassed with questions about whether Modi's absence is because of the poor prospects for a BJP victory in the state. "As far as I know, he has committed a couple of days to us," Shettar muttered recently.

Modi will address only two public meetings in Karnataka, whose capital Bangalore is the hub of India's information technology and biotechnology industries. The Gujarat chief minister was inclined to be much more generous with his time for Karnataka but has had second thoughts since, people aware of the scheduling said.

Rahul Gandhi's schedule in Karnataka is slightly more active, but not by very much. The Congress vice president has backed off from an April 22 meeting in Bellary, the district at the centre of the iron-ore mining scandal that has shaken the country. His mother and Congress president Sonia Gandhi won a Lok Sabha seat in 1999 from Bellary but she gave it up in favour of the Amethi in UP.

"Someone has wrongly led Rahulji's staff into believing that there are security issues in Bellary," said Anil Lad, mining baron and Congress candidate from the Bellary City assembly constituency. Rahul Gandhi is instead going to neighbouring Raichur.

Sources said that the recent Supreme Court judgement on the Bellary mining cases, and the fact that Lad's two mining companies, V S Lad and Sons and Hottur mines, have been classified as 'C' category mines whose licences are to be cancelled could have been the reason. "The main issue against the BJP government is corruption, but the Congress cannot explain away their choice of candidate," said a Congress leader.

Santosh Kumar, a local political worker for the Congress, observed that "people were keen to see Rahul here since neither he nor Sonia have bothered to visit after the Congress president won her LS seat in 1999."

Sonia will be starting her campaign from Mangalore in coastal Karnataka, and Chickmagalur, where the party is expecting the most gains in these elections. Chickmaglur is also the constituency that elected Indira Gandhi in the 1977 when the Janata Party wave was strong across much of north India.

In fact Karnataka's reputation of going against the prevailing political wind has sparked off much speculation about the 2014 election. If the state elects the Congress, does it mean that the national election will go another way?

source:http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news