Belagavi: Ramesh Jarkiholi begins playing ‘Maratha’ card for 2023 K’taka Assembly election

Team Udayavani, Dec 7, 2022, 1:30 PM IST

Belagavi: Amid the Karnataka-Maharashtra border tensions, Gokak Constituency legislator Ramesh Jarkiholi has begun political calculations keeping in mind the ‘Maratha’ vote bank in Belagavi for the upcoming 2023 Karnataka Assembly election.

As per the reports, Ramesh met Karnataka BJP In-charge Arun Singh in Delhi on Wednesday, December 6, and discussed about allotting tickets to Maratha candidates in Belagavi Rural, which is said to be consisting a maximum number of Marathas. He was accompanied by the President of Hindalga Gram Panchayat Nagesh Mannolkar and BJP leader Kiran Jadhav. They also met BJP State President Nalin Kumar Kateel and wished him on his birthday. Later, they had a long meeting on Belagavi politics.

Ramesh has informed Arun Singh that there are 70 percent Marathas in the Belagavi Rural region and that their votes were crucial for the party’s victory.

He said that to date BJP has never given a ticket for a Maratha candidate in the region for which, the voters were unhappy. Hence to defeat Congress in the region, it was very important to field a Maratha candidate. For this, he has suggested Nagesh Mannolkar as the candidate.

This is also said to be a strategy to defeat Congress legislator from Belagavi Rural Assembly Constituency Lakshmi Hebbalkar.

It can be recalled that a few days back, Ramesh had taken Nagesh along with him to Bengaluru and met Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai, Union Minister Pralhad Joshi, and former chief minister Jagadish Shettar.