In its first list of 21 candidates announced on Thursday March 21,2019, the BJP retained 14 of its 15 sitting Members of Parliament (MPs) for the upcoming general elections as it attempts to continue its dominance in the state.
In the 2014 elections, the BJP had won 17 of the 28 constituencies. It has won the majority of Lok Sabha seats since 2004, when it won 18 constituencies.
All three union ministers from the state - Ananth Kumar Hegde (Uttara Kannada), Ramesh Jigjinagi (Bijapur) and DV Sadananda Gowda (Bangalore North) - have been retained. Karadi Sanganna, the MP from Koppal, is the only MP to miss out on the first list.
Among the other candidates were veterans V Sreenivasa Prasad from Chamarajanagara (reserved for Scheduled Caste candidates), who has been an MP five times in the past and was a minister in the Union Cabinet of former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee government. Another veteran named in the list is GS Basavaraj, a four-time MP from Tumkur, who won for the first time in 1984.
The list also included recent inductees from the Congress. While rebel MLA Umesh Jadhav is set to go up against senior Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge from the Gulbarga seat, which is reserved for SCs, former MLA A Manju will contest the Hassan seat against former prime minister HD Deve Gowda’s grandson Prajwal Revanna.
The BJP also did not announce any candidates for the Mandya seat, where chief minister HD Kumaraswamy’s son Nikhil will battle against Sumalatha Ambareesh, wife of the late film star and former union minister MH Ambareesh, who is contesting as an independent candidate.
Surprisingly, BJP also did not announce a candidate in the Bangalore South seat, which has been retained by the party since 1991. Tejaswini, the wife of former union minister HN Ananth Kumar who died in November last, was expected to be named the party candidate. Kumar had won the seat for six consecutive elections.
No comments:
Post a Comment