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Karnataka BJP all set for electronic blitz

M D Riti in Bangalore

They may not know yet who their poll partners will be, or even whether they will be going it alone. But the Karnataka unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party, which has always been the most electronically-minded of the parties in the state, has almost completed work on its electronic media campaign.

As usual, they will use the film stars in their fold liberally for campaigning, especially electronically. This time, they have Mukhyamantri Chandru, a popular character actor, ageing hero Srinath who now plays the father in Kannada films, comedian Sihikahi Chandru and a couple of lesser stars, featuring in their three video productions.

One video of 30 minutes duration consists of short humorous skits interspersed with short speeches by a cross section of 15-20 national and state level BJP leaders on the party manifesto. Another one focuses on central government achievements in 10 minutes, while the last will be montages which will be used for publicity on television through cable channels.

Some of the most popular Kannada folk singers around have been roped in to sing for four audio cassettes, one of which is meant purely for use in the ubiquitous autorickshaws of Bangalore.

Music direction is by well-known folk music director C Ashwath, and lyrics have been composed by established poet Sumatindra Nadig, son-in-law of the renowned poet Gopalakrishna Adiga. Dodda Range Gowda, Guru Kiran, M N Vyasa Rao, B R Lakshmana Rao, H S Venkatesha Murthy and Lakshminarayana Bhatt will sing.

These cassettes will be ready for distribution by July 31, and will start doing the rounds of all the 224 assembly constituencies by August 10. Party general secretary M H Sridhar says that it cost the party about Rs 300,000 to produce the video cassettes, and another Rs 200,000 for the audio cassettes.

Internet does not figure on their campaign agenda, although Civil Aviation Minister Ananth Kumar has his own website, produced largely by his software engineer wife Tejaswini.

Meanwhile, another ageing film hero Ambareesh has hopped back into the Congress fold, after a sojourn with the Janata Dal, and is expected to contest for the Lok Sabha from his hometown of Mandya. He calculates that there will be a Congress wave in that part of the state, which belongs to the same region as state party chief S M Krishna's constituency of Maddur. This Mandya district area is a Vokkaliga belt. However, Krishna lost badly there in the last assembly polls.

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