Rahul to visit Karnataka's Chikmagalur where his grandmother Indira Gandhi made her political comeback

Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday attacked BJP of spreading violence, forming governments using money and dividing the country for the sake of power.

Pic courtesy: Twitter/@INCKarnataka

New Delhi: Congress president Rahul Gandhi is slated to visit Chikmagalur on Wednesday as part of the campaign for the upcoming Karnataka Assembly elections.

Interestingly, Chikmagalur is the place where his grandmother Indira Gandhi scripted her political comeback. The former PM had visited the place when she was not even a Member of Parliament. 

Indira had contested the Lok Sabha bypolls from Chikmagalur in 1978 and had subsequently won from there at the time when the Congress was down in dumps after the imposition of emergency. She had defeated Janata party's Veerendra Patil.

DB Chandre Gowda, a Congress loyalist, had vacated his parliamentary seat for Indira. Chikmagalur was a Congress stronghold until then. Two years later she returned as the PM of India dislodging the Janata Party government.

Meanwhile, apart from meeting senior leaders in Mangalore, Rahul will visit Sharadamba Temple in Sringeri and also meet Jagadguru Shankaracharya of Sringeri Mutt. Later in the afternoon, he will address two public meetings.

On the other hand, in a hard-hitting attack on the BJP, the Congress president on Tuesday accused it of spreading violence, forming governments using money and dividing the country for the sake of power.

Embarking on the third round of his campaign tour in poll-bound Karnataka, he also lashed out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi charging him with "insulting" the common man by claiming credit for the country's progress.

"They will do anything for power. Modi ji will come and repeatedly lie," Rahul said, addressing public meetings in the coastal Udupi and Dakshina Kannada districts, considered the stronghold of the BJP.

Two days after using Mahabharata analogy at the Congress plenary where he had said while BJP was like Kauravas, who fought for power, the Congress, as Pandavas did, battled for truth, he again invoked the epic battle to portray the present situation.

"The question then was whether Hindustan walks on the path of truth or lies. In a way, a similar question is again being asked today. On one side BJP that can do anything for power," he charged adding on other side, Congress was "based on truth."

(With PTI inputs)