BJP eyes MCC elections

Mangaluru: BJP in Dakshina Kannada is now focusing on wresting Mangaluru City Corporation (MCC) Council, which will go to the polls after nine months.

Accordong to sources, the party will 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. To keep its vote bank intact to win next year’s elections, the party would also re-activate its “page pramukhs”.

BJP district unit presidents have been elected to the post of MLA 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 and Y. Bharat Shetty too won the Assembly election for Mangaluru City South constituency.

Speaking with the media Matandoor said 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.

BJP would be working to retain the Lok Sabha seat which the BJP has been winning since 1991, he added.

The more-than-two-and-a-half decade hold of the Congress over the corporation council came to an end in 2007 when BJP won the election.