Even as the Congress is hopeful that AICC president Sonia Gandhi’s Karnataka visit on Friday will help it galvanise its cadre, it has denied any “caste angle” in Ms Gandhi’s proposed visit to the Lingayat affiliated Siddaganga Math.
Even though speculations are rife in media that Mrs Gandhi’s visit to the math ahead of the 2013 Assembly elections is an attempt to win over the majority community, the Congress leaders have rejected it saying that Mrs Gandhi’s visit to the math has “nothing to do with politics”.
“(Mrs Gandhi’s) visit is to a holy place to attend the 105th birthday functions of the math’s seer (Sri Shivakumara Swamiji). She is visiting the place on the math’s invitation, no matter how do you interpret it,” said Madhusudan Mistry, the Congress general secretary in charge of Karnataka.
Ms Gandhi, apart from attending the functions at the math, will also visit Nagasamudra village in the draught-hit Chitradurga district. She will also address about 1,000 Congress delegates from the state.
Party sources have confirmed that apart from Mr Mistry, three Union ministers from Karnataka — S.M. Krishna, M. Veerappa Moily, Mallikarjun Kharge and K.H. Muniyappa— and seven MPs from the state will accompany Ms Gandhi during her visit.
Ms Gandhi will also receive a ground report from the three Congress teams headed by Karnataka Opposition leader Siddaramaiah, the state Congress chief G. Parameshwara and Leader of the Opposition in the Upper House C. Motamma respectively, who were assigned by Ms Gandhi to tour the drought-hit taluks of the state for assessing the situation there.
Mr Parameshwara said three teams of Congress which had toured drought hit 123 taluks in the state would submit their report to Mrs Gandhi and seek her intervention to secure more finanial assistance to the state for drought relief work.