TUMAKURU: Veteran Congress leader and former Karnataka minister T B Jayachandra escaped with minor injuries when an SUV he was travelling in turned upside down on Bengaluru-Pune National Highway-48 near Seebi on the intermediary night of Tuesday and Wednesday.
He has been shifted to Vikram Hospital in Bengaluru where he has been recuperating with a hairline fracture on the rib and his condition is stable, his son informed TNIE.
After attending several events till late in the night in his erstwhile Sira assembly constituency, he was returning home to Bengaluru along with his gunner. When the car was approaching Tumakuru the chauffeur lost control as the rear tyre got flattened eventually ending up with the mishap at around 12.30 a.m.
The locals rushed to the spot and broke open the glass windows of the vehicle and rescued Jayachandra, an eyewitness Syed Yasir, informed. The driver and the gunner had escaped unhurt.
The traffic was halted on the highway for some time. Kallambella police have registered a case.
Seventy-two-year-old Jayachandra was the law and parliamentary affairs minister in the Siddadamaiah-led Congress government from 2013 to 2018. He lost the 2018 assembly polls to JD(S) party's B Satyanarayana and subsequently the 2020 bypolls to BJP's C M Rajesh Gowda. But he did not lose touch with the Sira assembly constituency and had been preparing for the 2023 assembly polls.