Dalits disillusioned with Cong, surprise results to come from South India in Lok Sabha polls: Bommai

Bengaluru, Jan 24: Stating that surprise results will come from South India in the coming Lok Sabha polls, former Karnataka CM Basavaraj Bommai said the BJP is expected to get the maximum number of seats in Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.

Speaking after welcoming a retired officer R. Rudraiah into the party at a function held at the BJP office here on Wednesday, he said the whole country was looking at Prime Minister Narendra Modi with a lot of confidence.

There has been a pro-BJP and pro- Modi wave from Kashmir to Kanyakumari. This time the unexpected result is expected from South India in the upcoming parliamentary polls. In Karnataka, the BJP will win more than 25 seats. Surprise results are also expected from Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.

He said the SC/ST communities were disillusioned with the Congress party. Though many castes were included in the SC/ ST categories, the quota has not been hiked. When he was the chief minister of Karnataka, the quota for the SCs was increased to 17 per cent from 15 per cent and the STs got a quota hike from 3 per cent to 4 per cent.

This helped the students to get 5,000 more seats in the engineering courses. Likewise, there would be an increase in reservation for these categories in the KPSC selection as the previous BJP government issued a gazette notification regarding the hike in quota.

He said the incumbent Congress government had done injustice to the Dalits by diverting Rs 11,000 crore of the SCP/TSP for the implementation of guarantee schemes. That money would have been spent on the improvement of their colonies, roads and other welfare schemes. These communities had been cheated by the Congress in many ways.

Bommai said that Rudraiah has been an honest worker in all parts of the state. He had implemented a number of irrigation schemes during the BJP regime.