Congress leader D K Shivakumar said on Thursday that he had warned party leaders that during the peak of the campaign, the party was headed into rough weather in the byelections.
“Wherever I went, thousands of people gathered. But I told my leaders that people turning up at rallies will not convert into votes,” Shivakumar told reporters.
“I’ve experienced this. During the Lok Sabha elections, I accompanied Nikhil Kumaraswamy to file his nomination. The number of people who gathered, I hadn’t seen in my 40-year career. But then, what happened? In the bypolls too, I saw the kind of people who gathered in Mahalakshmi Layout and even in Chikballapur,” he said.
Shivakumar said he was not lobbying for the post of KPCC president.