The Congress president said her party is keen to develop Mangalore in the mould of Bangalore by directing information technology investments to the commerce driven district.

“We will give special attention to Mangalore. There are many plans being put in place to provide employment to the youth in the region. We want to develop Mangalore like Bangalore and Hyderabad,” the Congress president said.

“Only the Congress can protect all sections of the society,” she said while asking a crowd of nearly 8,000 at the Nehru Maidan here to vote on May 16 for a government that can run for a full term.

“Some parties spread hatred and trap people in a constant fight with each other, others are opportunists who will hold the hand of anyone for power,” Sonia Gandhi said, while alleging that the state had regressed during the tenure of the BJP-JD(S) coalition.

Referring to incidents of communal violence in the region in October 2006, the Congress president said “an atmosphere of hatred has been created in the society here through the injection of the poison of enmity between communities”.

“We want to work in Karnataka the way the UPA government has been working in Delhi,” she said.

The Congress president received a rousing welcome from a mixed crowd— representative of the diverse people in the region, after Congress leader Janardhan Poojary, who hails from the region, revved the audience into action.

Mangalore was the second of Sonia Gandhi’s two campaign stops for the second phase of polls on May 16. The first stop was at Koppal in the north-east of the state earlier in the day.

The Mangalore area, with one of the largest presence of minorities, was until a decade ago a clear Congress stronghold. In more recent times the BJP has emerged as a key force holding a majority of the MP, MLA and local body constituencies in the region. In the 2004 polls, the BJP won 11 of the 15 then existing seats here while the Congress got three.

The two parties are expected to fight a very close battle this time especially with the JD(S) being considered a washout, among the generally the better educated and socio-economically stable populace here, on account of its opportunistic politics.

Mangalore has in recent times been witness to a growing number of communal incidents, several of them small skirmishes that have added to tensions in a society that is in general focused on furthering economic interests.

Only the second region after Bangalore to have an international airport, Mangalore has seen a rise in the number of self-appointed moral and cultural policing groups in recent times emerging from the ranks of sub-outfits of the Sangh Parivar.

The talk on the street is that some of the close fights in the current assembly polls could see the re-emergence of the Congress in the belt.