The Bharatiya Janata Party on Sunday released its first list of candidates for elections to the 224-seat Karnataka Assembly scheduled for May 12.
The party’s Karnataka unit president and chief ministerial candidate BS Yeddyurappa, Lok Sabha MP B Sriramulu and veteran state leaders Jagadish Shettar and KS Eswarappa were among the candidates in the list that the party released. The list was decided in a meeting of top BJP leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party president Amit Shah, PTI reported.
Yeddyurappa, the Lok Sabha MP from Shimoga, will contest from his home turf Shikharipura. The seat is currently represented by his son BY Raghavendra. The BJP has given the Shimoga constituency ticket to Yeddyurappa’s rival Eswarappa, The Indian Express reported.
Bellary MP Sriramulu, an associate of the Reddy brothers, will contest from Chitradurga’s Mokalmuru constituency, which is reserved as a Scheduled Tribe seat. He represented the Bellary rural seat in the past.
Both Yeddyurappa and Sriramulu had left the BJP before the 2013 Assembly elections to float their own parties – the Karnataka Janata Party and BSR Congress, respectively. Both parties joined the BJP before the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
The first list of candidates also features some new names, including Mallikayya Guttedar, a six-time MLA from Afzalpur who moved from the Congress to the BJP after differences with Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge.
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