BENGALURU: The Congress, finding it difficult to identify a formidable candidate to take on the BJP in B S Yeddyurappa’s bastion, is likely to give up Shivamogga LS seat to the JD (S), provided it fields a strong candidate.
According to the seat-sharing agreement between the coalition partners, Congress will contest from Ballari and Shivamogga LS seats and Jamkhandi assembly seat while JD(S) will field its candidates from Mandya LS seat and Ramanagara assembly seat. AICC general secretary K C Venugopal had on Tuesday announced the pact between the parties. However, after realising the difficulty to find a strong candidate against Yeddyurappa’s son
BY Raghavendra, the party leaders held talks with JD (S), which is keen to field its leader Madhu Bangarappa from Shivamogga. If that happens, it’s going to be Yeddyurappa’s son vs Bangarappa’s son in their home district.
“Madhu will be a better candidate compared to many others. He will be able to get Ediga support who have considerable presence in the district. If Congress throws its weight behind him, he will be a formidable candidate to take on BJP,” sources told TNIE.
Currently, the Congress has shortlisted its district unit president T N Srinivas and former minister Kimmane Rathnakar. While Rathnakar considers byelections as a waste of money and energy and has even written to the President of India demanding to countermand of the bypolls, Srinivas may not be a match for the BJP’s firepower.
Giving a clear indication of the talks between the two parties, JD (S) supremo H D Deve Gowda on Wednesday said they are trying to convince Madhu, a former MLA, to contest from Shivamogga and if he refuses to contest, the party will back Congress candidate. Gowda also stated that Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy was in touch with Madhu.
Madhu, who is currently travelling abroad, is said to be not too keen on contesting the polls. He is expected to return on Thursday.
In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, Yeddyurappa had won with a huge margin of 3.62 lakh votes. However, the margin between the Congress candidate Manjunath Bandary, who had polled 2,42,911 votes and the JD (S) candidate Geetha Shivarajkumar was just around 2,000 votes. She got 2,40,636 votes.
“Our aim is to defeat BJP and it doesn’t matter if it’s a Congress or JD(S) candidate,” sources said. The Congress and the JD (S) leaders are looking at all options to give a tough fight to BJP.
However, giving up Shivamogga to the JD(S) is not going to be easy for the party, which is facing rebellion from its workers in Mandya and Ramanagara. Though both these districts are JD (S) stronghold, the party workers are demanding that the leadership put up its candidates so that it can retain its base. “The party is looking at the big picture and willing to make some small adjustments to defeat the BJP in 2019,” sources added.