BENGALURU: Even as the curtains came down for campaigning in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections in Karnataka, a new challenge awaits the star politicians in the state -- assembly bypolls to Chincholi (Gulbarga) and Kundgol (Dharwad) on May 19. Both Congress and BJP are getting poll-ready. In the 2018 assembly elections, BJP’s Sunil Vallyapure lost to surgeon Dr Umesh Jadhav of Congress by 19,000 votes in Chincholi, and BJP’s C S Ishwargoud lost to C S Shivalli of Congress by a mere 600 votes in Kundgol.
The byelection to Kundgol Assembly seat is necessitated following the demise of Shivalli while that of Chincholi due to the resignation of Congress MLA Umesh Jadhav who has since joined BJP.
BJP State president B S Yeddyurappa and state party leaders as also Congress leaders Siddaramaiah, Dinesh Gundu Rao and G Parameshwara are expected to campaign after May 5. Both sides are taking a break before they hit the campaign trail once again.
What is worrying for the Congress-JDS camp is that BJP will be seeking to push up its number of MLAs from 104. And if it succeeds in winning these two seats, it would reach 106. Add to this the disgruntled Congress MLAs — Ramesh Jarkiholi (Gokak) who openly campaigned for BJP and MLAs B C Patil (Hirekerur), Dr K Sudhakar, (Chikkaballapur), B Nagendra (Ballari) and Mahesh Kumtalli (Athani) — none of whom campaigned for their party in a big way in the LS polls.