At BTM layout, what makes Ramalinga Reddy tick

The Karnataka assembly elections will see senior Congress leader, Ramalinga Reddy's daughter Sowmya Reddy making her debut. She will contest from the prestigious Jayanagar constituency and ably assisting her is her father.

While Ramalinga Reddy has been busy campaigning for his daughter, he ensures that he spends time in his own constituency in BTM layout which has been his bastion for long.

It is a battle of the Reddys here. Ramalinga is up against Lallesh Reddy, the nephew of mining baron, Janardhana Reddy. The battle for Lallesh is not an easy one as his opponent is a strong candidate.

Ramalinga Reddy sounds confident of a win. "This is a constituency which has an equal measure of Christians, Reddys, SC/ST, Vokkaligas, Brahmins and north Indians. Each one of them number around 15,000 and this means that any candidate would have to please all. In short, one cannot play any kind of card over here."

Ramalinga Reddy would play on the fact that he is a familiar face in both Jayanagar and BTM. This, in fact, would not only help him but his daughter too in the campaign. Prior to the delimitation exercise, Reddy was contesting from Jayanagar. He has won this constituency four times and post delimitation, he moved to BTM Layout.

Post the exercise, several parts of the Jayanagar constituency were included into BTM layout and hence the voter has not been completely new to him. He would use this to advantage like the way he did during the previous elections.