BJP’s prospects improved by 50% under Narendra Modi and Amit Shah: BS Yeddyurappa

Bengaluru: The Bharatiya Janata Party’s chief ministerial candidate BS Yeddyurappa said he was confident that the party would repeat its stellar performance of Uttar Pradesh in the upcoming assembly election in Karnataka as the party organisation had improved considerably under national president Amit Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Predicting that the BJP would get 140 seats in the 224-member assembly, Yeddyurappa told ET, “The situation has changed a lot since 2008, when we got 110 seats in Karnataka. The organisation has become strong, stronger than in Gujarat, UP or any other part of the country. It has improved more than 50% now due to Shah and Modi.”

Yeddyurappa said that the PM’s scheduled rallies in the state from May 1 would add more seats to the BJP kitty, as would the visits of Congress president Rahul Gandhi. “I get more votes every time that gentleman (Rahul Gandhi) visits… he tries to quote Basavanna’s vachanas at rallies and people laugh at him,” he said.


The BJP’s chief ministerial candidate claimed that more than 90% people of the state had lost confidence in chief minister Siddaramaiah, and predicted that the Janata Dal (S) of former Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda would win about 25 seats. “We have no need to take their help to form the government; we will do it on our own,” he said.

Pointing out that he had returned to the BJP fold in 2014 only because of Modi, Yeddyurappa said, “I am also the one who said that he will become the Prime Minister, much before he did. Modi came for my swearing-in as Karnataka CM in 2008. Now he will come as PM for my swearing in on May 18.”

He said that he and the party’s state unit were getting more support than ever before to fight the election and that all central leaders and chief ministers of other BJPruled states were coming to Karnataka for the purpose. “We have so many leaders, unlike the Congress, where Siddaramaiah has to manage with just Rahul Gandhi,” he said. Yeddyurappa said his next goal was to ensure that the BJP wins 23-24 of the 28 Lok Sabha constituencies in Karnataka in 2019. “The assembly is already with us. I want to win that many Lok Sabha constituencies as my contribution to the next Modi government. I am working towards that,” he said.

He said the party’s central leadership had taken a call that his son Vijayendra should not contest from Varuna, where Siddaramaiah’s son Yathindra is contesting, and that it was not the result of groupism within the BJP. “I announced it myself that he will not contest. The central leadership felt that I am the CM candidate, so my second son should not be a party candidate, also,” he said.