BJP workers stayed out of the blazing sun leaving thousands of seats empty at the Parivarthana rally.

BENGALURU: The Nava Karnataka Parivarthana rally on Thursday was marked by chaos, with party leaders cutting a sorry figure before national president Amit Shah on the poor turnout.For almost three hours, party leaders tried to make public announcements at repeated intervals, to seat their workers and show a strength of numbers in front of television cameras and their national leadership . While seating arrangements were made for over 1 lakh workers at BIEC , the attendance was just 20,000 to 25,000 workers.

The BJP leadership tried to save face by saying that the Karnataka government had thwarted their bike rallies.“The Siddaramaiah government and police barred our workers from taking bike rallies to the venue from other districts, and the traffic in the city has seen thousands of our workers stuck in jams,“ state BJP president B S Yeddyurappa said before Shah.

However, when Shah tried to rally workers into some lusty sloganeering, there was only a whimper. “Arrey bhai, Karnatak vale aise bolenge kya? Yeddyurappaji Parivarthana yatra lekar nikhal rahe hain... (Brothers, do people of Karnataka have such a low voice? Yeddyurappa is taking out the Parivarthana yatra...),'' he shouted.

Party workers admitted that there was miscommunication and mismanagement . “We were not told that Shah's arrival was delayed, our workers were here by 9am and the sun left them drained,“ an office-bearer said. Shah arrived at 1pm.

The responsibility of bringing crowds to the venue and managing the function was reportedly handed over to BJP MLA R Ashoka.

