Saturday, April 29 2006 15:25 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Chennai: Advani's 'Bharat suraksha yatra' in the Karnataka stretch, to be resumed on May 3, had been called off as the BJP leader would be involved in campaigning in the states going to the polls, senior party leader M Venkaiah Naidu said today (Apr 29, 2006).

Naidu, co-ordinator of the yatra, said in a statement here that the party had decided to call off the yatra in Karnataka to enable Advani spare time for the election campaign.

Later, speaking to to reporters, he said Advani would be campaigning for the BJP candidates in Pondicherry on May 4.

Advani, who will be in Nagercoil this evening, would campaign for the BJP candidates there tonight and proceed to Arantangi and Coimbatore tomorrow.

"A host of senior BJP leaders like Jaswanth Singh, Yaswanth Sinha, Sushma Swaraj and Arjun Munda would campaign for the BJP in the state next week," he said.

Predicting a hung assembly in Tamil Nadu, he said the two major parties DMK and the AIADMK would not get sufficient sets to form a government in the May 8 assembly polls.

"Both parties were not confident of winning the poll and hence had resorted to 'cheap populist poll promises," he said, adding that the BJP did not believe in populist schemes.

He demanded to know whether DMK Chief M Karunanidhi, who had promised rice at Rs two per kg, would prevail upon the UPA government to introduce the scheme at the national level.