The Hindu

BANGALORE, Jan 3: Riding high on its impressive performance in the recently held byelections to the Legislative Assembly, the Janata Dal (Secular) has chalked out a three-tier action plan for galvanising the party organisation ahead of the forthcoming elections to the Lok Sabha.

Announcing this at a press conference here on Friday, Janata Dal (Secular) spokesperson and MLC Y.S.V. Datta said the party had also decided to announce the names of eight to 10 candidates by this month-end for the Lok Sabha elections so that they could prepare from now.

The party would soon informally finalise the names of candidates for the remaining Lok Sabha seats and ask them to prepare for the polls. However, these names would not be made public till the elections are announced.

Under the three-tier programme, the party has decided to strengthen its organisation at the State, district and constituency-levels from the Sankranthi festival day, which signifies the harvest season.

By January 14, the party would commence the process of finalising the names of State office-bearers and also appoint two observes to each district to re-organise the district units within a week. These observers would form a Assembly constituency-level committee of about 400 persons by choosing two workers from each polling booth. The members of this committee would take up an extensive padayatra in the constituency and also camp in villages from February first week to the last week. During the padayatra, they would take up door-to-door visit of houses and try to create public awareness about the achievements of governments headed by party leaders H.D. Deve Gowda and H. D. Kumaraswamy and also the “failures” of the BJP Government, he said.

Polit bureau

Datta said the Janata Dal (Secular) was planning to create a high-level policy-making body for the party on the lines of the polit bureau of Communist parties to look into policy issues. Such a body had been mooted by Mr. Gowda to bring about discipline and perspective in the party cadre besides clarity in its thoughts, he said.

Poll panel notice

The Election Officer of Madugiri Assembly constituency in the recently held bypoll has issued a notice to Mr. Kumaraswamy and Janata Dal (Secular) MLA Zameer Ahmed Khan for violating the model code of conduct by visiting the constituency on the polling day.

In the notice, the official has noted that visitors to the Madhuguri constituency, who are not voters of the constituency, were supposed to leave the constituency 48 hours before the polling day scheduled for December 27. But Kumaraswamy and his followers had visited Kodigenahally village of Madhuguiri on December 27 between noon and 1 p.m. to campaign for his wife, Anitha, the election officer alleged.

He has sought explanation from Kumaraswamy for the violation of model code of conduct. Referring to this at the press conference, Datta said Kumaraswamy would be sending an appropriate reply to the notice.