After success in the Assembly Polls, BJP now eyes MCC elections

Mangalore Today News Network

Mangaluru, May 27, 2018: In the after math of success in the Assembly elections, the BJP in Dakshina Kannada is now focussing on wresting Mangaluru City Corporation (MCC) Council, which will go to the polls after nine months. And also retain its Parliamentary seat which the party has won in the past seven elections.

BJP Presidents of two Assembly constituency units of the party and its district unit president have now been elected MLAs.

As per party sources, though the three leaders have been elevated, the party would not change its existing office-bearers of various units within the district till next year’s election to urban local bodies and the Lok Sabha election gets over. The party would also re-activate its “page pramukhs” to keep its vote bank intact to win next year’s elections.

If Sanjeeva Matandoor, president, the district unit of the party, was elected to the Assembly from Puttur, D. Vedavyasa Kamath, president, Mangaluru City South unit of the party, also made it to the Assembly. In Mangaluru City South, its unit president Y. Bharat Shetty too won the Assembly election.

Matandoor told media that the party has so far no plans to replace the office-bearers who have been elected to the Assembly with others. The “page pramukhs” who played a significant role by contacting voters and persuading them to vote for the BJP ahead of the Assembly elections would continue to play their role. The party would soon conduct workshops for them to overcome lapses noticed during the Assembly elections. They would be activated again from July with an objective of winning the next year’s elections. The party would have to get back the Mangaluru City Corporation Council which it lost in the 2013 election to the urban local bodies, he said.

Matandoor said that the party would be working to retain the Lok Sabha seat which the BJP has been winning since 1991.

The BJP won the election to the corporation council for the first time in 2007 by ending the more-than-two-and-a-half decade hold of the Congress over it.

The Congress has been ruling the corporation council since 1984 when the corporation came into being. But the BJP lost the election to the sixth council of the corporation in 2013. In the 60-member council, the BJP won 20 seats leaving 35 to the Congress, two to the Janata Dal (Secular), one each to the CPI (M) and the Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI) and an Independent.