Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister and Telugu Desam Party (TDP) president N Chandrababu Naidu will be campaigning for ruling Janata Dal-Secular-Congress alliance in Karnataka. On the request of JD(S) chief and former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda, Naidu will be visiting Karnataka on Monday to address few election rallies.
Naidu, along with Deve Gowda and his son and Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy, will campaign in few Lok Sabha constituencies, especially those having sizeable Telugu-speaking people, TDP sources said.
With elections to both Andhra Pradesh Assembly and Lok Sabha completed in a single phase on April 11, Naidu will be campaigning for allies in other states, where elections are scheduled in subsequent phases.
Deve Gowda had last week addressed an election rally for the TDP in Andhra Pradesh. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and National Conference leader Farooq Abdullah had also addressed couple of election rallies of the TDP.
They had all urged the people of Andhra Pradesh to vote for the TDP and for Naidu. However, it was not clear if Naidu would also visit West Bengal and Delhi to campaign for the Trinamool Congress and the Aam Admi Party.
Karnataka will go to the polls on April 18 for the first phase and on April 23 for the second phase.
On April 11, as Andhra went to the polls, a little over 79 per cent voters cast their votes in the simultaneous elections to 175-member Andhra Pradesh Assembly and 25 Lok Sabha seats.
The polling percentage had gone up compared to 2014 elections when 77.80 per cent turnout was recorded. There were 319 candidates in fray for Lok Sabha seats while 2,118 candidates contested the Assembly polls.
IANS inputs