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In a bid to tap the sizable population of South Indian voters in the national capital, BJP has fielded its central leaders from the southern states to campaign in localities where people from Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala live in large numbers.
Around 8-10 lakh Tamilians and an equal number of Keralites live in Delhi. Most of the South Indian population is concentrated in areas like Mayur Vihar (all three phases), Dilshad Garden, R K Puram and some pockets of Dwarka, Uttam Nagar and Vikaspuri.
While BJP has no plans of overtly wooing the South Indian voters in the capital, it has decided to hold public meetings of leaders like M Venkaiah Naidu, Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj and others to reach out to this section.
Naidu is a prominent South Indian leader of the main Opposition and Swaraj enjoys some popularity among such voters since she contested from Bellary against Congress President Sonia Gandhi in 1999. Swaraj is also fluent in some of the South Indian languages.
However, BJP faces a handicap of not having many tall leaders in the South as it hardly has a presence in the region, except Karnataka. Since there are not many Kannadigas in Delhi, it cannot gain much by fielding leaders from Karnataka.
Party sources said Ananth Kumar, Murlidhar Rao and Nirmala Sitharaman may also campaign in Delhi localities which have sizable South Indian population. Kumar, who was in-charge of Madhya Pradesh, can now spare time for campaigning in Delhi as polling is over in that state.
BJP's main political rival Congress has already asked its leaders from the South to campaign in these areas of Delhi.
