Karnataka Assembly polls: Coorg's moved away from somnolence

While Congress president Rahul Gandhi's rally in Coorg was successful, BJP president Amit Shah opted to make a speech and leave - he did not seem to want to engage with locals

Ex-Air Marshal KC ‘Nanda’ Cariappa was laconic but peppery. “The Prime Minister has a lot of things to do; so, he could have made a mistake. But, frankly, his speech writers, the minions who brief him, ought be hauled over the coals,” he said, in a clipped British accent (he trained at the Royal College of Defence Studies, London).

The reference was to what the PM had said during his campaign in Karnataka about Nanda’s father, legendary Field Marshal Cariappa. A speech riddled with errors, in which he had claimed the Congress party humiliated two army chiefs from the state,