On the last day of filing nominations for the Karnataka Assembly elections, the BJP and Congress have come out with their final list of candidates. While the saffron party announced its faces for Shivamogga and Manvi, the Congress list includes candidates for the remaining five constituencies.
Much to the dismay of former Deputy Chief Minister K S Eshwarappa, the BJP refused to give a ticket to his son K E Kantesh in the Shivamogga assembly segment. Instead, the party has fielded Channabasappa.
Eshwarappa, who recently announced his decision to retire from electoral politics, had requested the Central leadership to not consider fielding him from Shivamogga. Instead, sought the ticket for his son Kantesh.
There were already rumblings within the party over the Shivamogga seat after BJP leader and MLC Ayanur Manjunath lashed out against Eashwarappa for promoting his son rather than for those who worked with him to build the party. Manjunath then switched sides to join JD(S) and is now the JD(S) candidate from the segment.
Kanthesh too had met former Chief Minister and BJP Parliamentary Board member BS Yediyurappa in his bid for candidacy. He had then expressed confidence in the party and in "getting a chance."
From Manvi, an ST reserve constituency, the party has fielded B V Nayak as the candidate. With the announcement of this list, the BJP has announced candidates for all 224 Assembly segments in the state.
Congress final list
The Congress too has come out with the final list wherein it replaced the candidate against Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai in Shiggaon. While its earlier list had Mohammed Yousuf Savanur as its candidate from Shiggaon in the Haveri district, the party zeroed in on Yasir Ahmed Khan Phatan in the final list.
The Congress has nominated B V Rajeev Gowda from Sidlaghatta, replacing sitting MLA V Muniyappa.
The other candidates announced are Mohammed Shalam for Raichur, S Anand Kumar from C V Raman Nagar, H P Sridhar Gowda from Arkalgud and Inayath Ali from Mangalore City North.
With this, Congress has fielded candidates for all the 224 Assembly segments in the state.
However, sitting MLA R Akhanda Srinivasa Murthy was replaced in Pulakeshinagar. The party has replaced him with A C Srinivasa. However, Murthy on Wednesday filed a nomination as an independent candidate.
Murthy, a Dalit, won the 2018 Assembly elections with the highest margin of 81,626 votes, creating a record. His house along with the DJ Halli police station was torched by a violent mob in August 2020, over a social media post shared by his relative.
In Bengaluru's K R Puram, Congress has fielded D K Mohan against BJP's Byrathi Basavaraj, a Minister in the Basavaraj Bommai government.
Interestingly, Byrathi Basavaraj won the seat on a Congress ticket in the 2018 Assembly polls. He was among the 17 Congress-JD(S) MLAs who resigned, which led to the collapse of the coalition government and paved the way for the BJP to come to power in 2019. In the subsequent by-polls, he won on a BJP ticket.
In Mulbagal, the party has fielded B C Muddugangadhar. In 2018, the seat was won by independent candidate H Nagesh, who is now the Congress candidate from the Mahadevapura segment in Bengaluru.