Daijiworld Media Network - Bengaluru
Bengaluru, Mar 24: Congress leader B K Hariprasad will contest the coming Lok Sabha elections from Bengaluru South.
The Congress on Sunday March 24 released its ninth list of 10 candidates for the coming Lok Sabha elections from various states. Hariprasad is the lone candidate in the list from Karnataka.
So far, Congress has announced names of 19 of the 20 candidates it will field in Karnataka. The remaining 8 will be fielded by its alliance partner JD(S).
The BJP is yet to announce its candidate from Bengaluru South, although it was reported that the late union minister Ananth Kumar's wife Tejaswini would be the party's choice.
However, now speculations are rife that Prime Minister Narendra Modi may himself choose this seat as his second constituency along with Varanasi. The rumoured move is aimed at boosting BJP's presence in southern India, a region that has not been very kind to the party so far.
B K Hariprasad is currently a Rajya Sabha member. He however has his task cut out, as Bengaluru South Lok Sabha seat has been historically anti-Congress. For over 40 years, the constituency has elected non-Congress MPs, except in 1989 when R Gundu Rao won from here. From 1996 until his death last year, Ananth Kumar was the MP from this seat, having won six times, even against Hariprasad in 1999.
If indeed PM Modi decides to contest from Bengaluru South, Hariprasad is likely to have a hard time not only trying to defeat the highly popular PM, but defying history as well.