3 new entrants from Cong given BJP tickets in first list in Karnataka
Bengaluru, Mar 21: Recent entrant and Congress rebel lawmaker Umesh Jadhav will take on Congress leader in Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge from Gulbarga as the BJP announced its list of 21 candidates for the two-phased Lok Sabha polls in the state.
Two other new entrants from the Congress A Manju, a former MLA, and his party colleague Devendrappa, both of whom joined the BJP recently, have been rewarded with tickets to contest from Hassan and Bellary, respectively.
Fourteen of the 21 candidates announced are sitting members.
The names of the candidates for Karnataka were part of the first list of 184 nominees for Lok Sabha polls announced by senior BJP leader J P Nadda in Delhi Thursday evening.
The state has 28 Lok Sabha seats, of which the BJP had bagged 17, Congress 9 and JDS 2 in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.
The BJP had yielded Ballari seat to Congress in the November bypolls.
Jadhav, a former Minister, joined the BJP at a party rally in Kalaburagi on March 6, two days after he quit the Karnataka Assembly membership, at a rally addressed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Jadhav, who was sulking after being dropped as minister, had on March 4 submitted his resignation from the Assembly to Speaker Ramesh Kumar.
However, Jadhav's resignation as MLA has not yet been accepted by the Speaker, who is also yet to decide on the disqualification petitions filed by the Congress, against him.
Manju, joined BJP on Sunday, unhappy with Congress' decision to cede Hassan seat to its coalition partner JD(S).
He is likely to fight against former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda's grandson Prajwal Revanna. Gowda is the sitting MP from Hassan.
Manju was earlier with BJP before joining the Congress and becoming Minister in the previous Siddaramaiah led government and again returning back to the saffron party.
Union Ministers D V Sadananda Gowda from Bangalore North, Ramesh Jigajinagi from Bijapur and Ananth Kumar Hegde from Uttara Kannada, as also B Y Raghavendra, son of former chief minister B S Yeddyurappa from Shimoga, have been renominated.
Other candidates whose names have been announced by the party are, Suresh Angadi (Belgaum), P C Gaddigoudar (Bagalkot), Bhagawanth Kuba (Bidar), Shivkumar Udasi (Haveri), Prahlad Joshi (Dharwad) and Siddeshwara (Davangere);
Shobha Karandlaje (Udupi-Chikmagalur), Nalin Kumar Kateel (Dakshina Kannada), Narayana Swamy (Chitradurga), Basavaraju (Tumkur);
Prathap Simha (Mysore), Srinivasa Prasad (Chamarajanagar), PC Mohan (Bangalore central) and Bachche Gowda (Chikkaballapur).
BJP is the first to announce its list of candidates, while the Congress and JD(S) are yet to finalise their list with confusion still prevailing over some constituencies following opposition at the grassroot level over conceding the seats.
Congress workers in Mandya, Tumkur and Hassan are miffed with the party for conceding the seats to JDS.
The Congress and JD(S) that have decided to fight the polls in alliance will contest for 20 and 8 seats, respectively.
Karnataka will go to the polls in two phases, 14 constituencies each, on April 18 and 23.
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Cong performed better in Kerala, anti-incumbency trends influenced WB, TN: CM Siddaramaiah
Bengaluru (PTI): Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Monday said the Congress had largely met or exceeded expectations in several States, even as results in some regions reflected shifting voter sentiments.
Speaking to reporters in Bengaluru, he said the party accepted the mandate in Assam while performing better than anticipated in Kerala.
He also pointed to possible anti-incumbency trends influencing outcomes in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu.
“In Assam, we got the expected result, and we accept the people’s mandate. In Kerala, we have won more seats than expected. We anticipated around 76 to 80, but we have gone up to around 95,” Siddaramaiah said.
In West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, there may have been an anti-incumbency trend, and that could have influenced the results, he added.
Siddaramaiah also extended his congratulations to a new political entrant in Tamil Nadu, noting the emergence of a different electoral dynamic in the State.
“I congratulate the new entrant who has achieved success there,” he added.
Deputy Chief Minister D K Shivakumar said electoral outcomes in some States had diverged from the party’s internal assessments, reflecting evolving voter expectations.
“We expected a certain trend, but the results have been different. Political reading was wrong in some places,” he said.
“People were looking for change in some States, and that has been reflected in the results,” Shivakumar, who is also the Congress Karnataka unit president, said.
Referring to Kerala, he said the Congress-led alliance had benefited from public sentiment.
“There was already an expectation based on local body elections, and people had shown confidence in us. That has translated into a strong result,” the Deputy Chief Minister said.
On Tamil Nadu, he acknowledged that the scale of political shift had come as a surprise.
“We expected to secure around 30 to 40 per cent of the vote share, but such a major shift was not anticipated. It shows that voter expectations were different,” he said.
Shivakumar added that electoral outcomes underscored the need for better political assessment in future.
“We have to understand these changes carefully. Political reading cannot go wrong like this,” he said.
