B.S. Yediyurappa

MANGALORE: Deputy Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa has announced that the State Government will adopt the Ullal Nagar Panchayat area for its total development. "Give us Ullal and we will transform it into a modern and model town," he said.

Mr. Yediyurappa told presspersons here on Tuesday that the Government would "right the wrongs" that, he said, had been meted out to the people of Ullal by previous governments.

He said that his party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was determined to win the Ullal byelection, not for the sake of prestige but to save the people of Ullal from the alleged misrule of the Congress for so many years.

He challenged Congress leaders to engage with him in a duel of words over a television channel or on a public platform, and said he was prepared to take on any of them. He said there was no denying that the people of Ullal had been neglected by the Congress for all these years. During the last 36 hours of his campaign, he had visited 24 places in Ullal, and the condition of every part of the town spoke of the large-scale neglect of the poor, he added.

He appealed to the minorities in the Ullal Legislative Assembly constituency to allow the BJP to have its own elected member in Ullal, and they could then see for themselves how the face of Ullal would change within the next two years. Mr. Yediyurappa said the BJP did not "engineer" the communal divide as alleged by the Congress.

The Janata Dal (Secular) was an independent party and was free to field its own candidate in any constituency it wished to, he said.

Earlier in the day, Mr. Yediyurappa campaigned in many places in Ullal, going from house to house. At many places, even in Muslim areas, he was welcomed with open doors.

Minister in charge of the district B. Nagaraja Shetty, BJP State chief D.V. Sadananda Gowda, and BJP district chief Monappa Bhandary accompanied him.

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