Bharatiya Janata Party leader Lal Kishenchand Advani's 'Bharat Suraksha Yatra' through Karnataka, scheduled to begin on May 3, has been called off as he would be involved in campaigning in poll-bound states, senior party leader M Venkaiah Naidu said on Saturday.
Naidu, co-ordinator of the yatra, said in a statement in Chennai 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 on Saturday evening, would campaign for the BJP candidates there Saturday night and proceed to Arantangi and Coimbatore on Sunday.
A host of senior BJP leaders like Jaswant Singh, Yaswant 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 -- Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam -- would not get sufficient seats 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 asked whether DMK chief M Karunanidhi, who had promised rice at Rs 2 per kg, would prevail upon the United Progressive Alliance government to introduce the scheme at the national level also.
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