Daijiworld Media Network - Bengaluru (SP)
Bengaluru, Apr 15: After days of wait and several rounds of talks, the Congress on Sunday April 15 evening released its first list of candidates for the crucial Karnataka elections.
The Congress announced candidates for 218 of the 224 constituencies.
Setting all speculations to rest, chief minister Siddaramaiah will be contesting only from one constituency, that is from Chamundeshwari. Dr Devraj Patil will contest from Badami, where Congress supporters had urged the CM to contest from. As expected, Siddaramaiah's son Dr Yathindra will contest from Varuna.
In Dakshina Kannada, sitting MLAs J R Lobo from Mangaluru South, U T Khader from Mangalore (Ullal), Mohiuddin Bava from Mangaluru North, Shakuntala Shetty from Puttur, Ramanath Rai from Bantwal and Vasant Bangera from Beltangady have been given the tickets. The Moodbidri ticket, for which Congress had three aspirants, has gone to sitting MLA Abhaychandra Jain.
In Udupi district, Pramod Madhwaraj (Udupi), Vinay Kumar Sorake (Kaup), Rakesh Malli (Kundapur), Gopal Bhandary (Karkala) and Gopal Poojary (Byndoor) have been given the tickets.
As prolonged discussions could not result in resolving persisting differences between party leaders over 29 assembly seats, national president of the party, Rahul Gandhi, had formed a sub-committee which took a final decision. The candidates' list was finalised at the CM's residence after a final round of talks.
Consensus had been arrived at relating to 195 candidates including sitting legislators and those who lost in the last election with a small margin, three days back. But the issue of the balance 29 constituencies had proved to be a hard nut for the leaders to crack. During the last two days, leaders had been aggressively batting for the candidates of their individual choice, but the other leaders had been seeking tickets for their supporters.
The polling for the Karnataka elections will be held in a single phase on May 12 and the counting will be on May 15.
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