BJP forms 17-member panel to draft poll manifesto

The Bharatiya Janata Party's Karnataka unit has constituted a 17-member committee headed by its state spokesperson S. Suresh Kumar to draft the manifesto for the forthcoming Assembly elections. Among others, the committee comprises retired IAS officers Madan Gopal and C. Somashekhar, MPs Prabhakar Kore and Shivakumar Udasi, MLA Basavaraj Bommai and senior leader V. Srinivas Prasad. The BJP has set a target of winning 150 of the total 224 Assembly seats in the state in the coming elections to be held in March/April 2018. Mr. Kumar told The Hindu that the manifesto would be ready sometime in February 2018. He explained that the committee intended to adopt a democratic approach in evolving the pre-poll manifesto by interacting with the cross-sections of society in a bid to represent their aspirations in it. “We will tour all the 30 districts and hold interactive sessions with people from all walks of life to decide the issues that should be included in the pre-poll manifesto,” Mr. Kumar said, while remarking that “the manifesto is going to a be democratic script”. He also said the committee would give priority for several prominent issues, such as farmers’ distress.