LS polls: BJP set to finalise Karnataka candidates today; Many MPs to be dropped?

Team Udayavani, Mar 11, 2024, 9:17 AM IST

Bengaluru: The much-awaited BJP Central Election Committee meeting will be held in New Delhi on Monday evening. Speculations are rife that the list of candidates for Karnataka could be finalised and an announcement will be made.

The election committee meeting scheduled for Sunday was postponed to Monday. BJP National President JP Nadda and Home Minister Amit Shah held a meeting with the senior leaders of the state and gathered information about the constituencies of the state. But, the names of the candidates have not been finalized, sources said.

BJP State president B Y Vijayendra has already reached New Delhi, B S Yediyurappa and R Ashok will reach New Delhi on Monday afternoon.

There are BJP MPs in 25 of the 28 constituencies in the state, while Sumalatha, a BJP-backed non-party member, is currently the Member of Parliament (MP) from Mandya. BJP had announced candidates for 195 constituencies in its first list. Out of these, an average of 30% of sitting MPs have been denied tickets. In this background, the question has arisen as to how many sitting MPs who aspire to contest elections in the state will be denied tickets.

Several MPs, including G S Basavaraj of Tumkur, Shivkumar Udasi of Haveri, A Narayanaswamy of Chitradurga, B N Bache Gowda of Chikkaballapur, Srinivasa Prasad of Chamarajanagar have already announced that they will not be contesting Lok Sabha elections.

According to sources, Dakshina Kannada MP Nalin Kumar Kateel, Shobha Karandlaje from Udupi-Chikkamagalur, Khooba from Bidar, Pratap Simha from Mysore, Mangala from Belgaum (Belagavi), D V Sadananda Gowda from Bangalore North, Ramesh Jigajinagi from Vijayapura (Bijapur), Karadi Sanganna from Koppal, Anant Hegde from Uttara Kannada are likely to be on the list.

However, the distribution of tickets for Dakshina Kannada, Udupi-Chikkamagaluru, Uttara Kannada, and Belgaum (Belagavi) constituencies, which are the strongholds of the BJP, has become a challenge for the BJP leaders this time. Furthermore, untangling the complexities in the constituencies of Haveri, Bidar, Tumkur, Mysore, Chamarajanagar, Chikkaballapur, and Koppal is posing a significant challenge, BJP sources said.

According to top BJP sources, tickets for 10 to 15 constituencies are likely to be finalised on Monday. The BJP leaders have already held a round of talks about the list given by the state functionaries. However, the details of which are kept under wraps.