Gujarat's Dalit leader and newly-elected MLA Jignesh Mevani on Monday, 29 January, urged the Karnataka electorate to not vote for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the upcoming Assembly polls, and said he will campaign against that party in the southern state.
"I'm ready to compromise with my ideologies to save our Constitution and to keep the BJP from winning the Karnataka elections," Mevani said, speaking at a commemoration event held in Bengaluru on the birth anniversary of slain journalist Gauri Lankesh.
He also said that mainstream political parties from Karnataka should form an alliance to defeat the BJP.
Mevani, the MLA from Vadgam in Gujarat, said he will campaign against the BJP for three weeks in April. The elections are likely to be held in April-May in Karnataka.
The elections to the current 224-member Karnataka Assembly were held in May 2013.
I will speak to the Dalits (in Karnataka) and tell them their vote shouldn’t go to the BJP. The government hasn’t paid much attention to jobs or farmer suicides but only focused on issues like love jihad.Jignesh Mevani, MLA from Vadgam
He claimed the BJP and Prime Minister Narandra Modi had not kept their promises of providing two crore jobs every year, made ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
Earlier, in December, the Dalit leader from Gujarat had announced that he will be campaigning against the BJP in the upcoming state Assembly polls in Karnataka.
“I am not concerned about which party will benefit by my campaign... but my focus is to defeat the BJP,” he had said, while speaking at an event organised by the Karnataka Komu Souharda Vedike in Chikkamagaluru.
He urged activists in the state to field candidates associated with people’s movements in the upcoming elections. “No matter to which party or organisation the candidate belongs to, we have to support him or her. We shall also appeal to the Congress not to field its candidates against them, as the party did in my case in Gujarat. Our goal must be to defeat the Sangh Parivar,” said Mewani as per The Hindu.
(This story was first published on The News Minute and has been republished with permission)
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