BELAGAVI: The much-awaited second list of Congress candidates for Karnataka is expected to be announced on Wednesday. At the meeting of the party Central Election Committee held at the AICC office in New Delhi, the candidates for 16 Lok Sabha constituencies were finalised. This still leaves four constituencies vacant, and sources said that those names too will be announced on Wednesday.
Sources said the party’s 16 candidates are: Chandrappa (Chitradurga), Mrinal Hebbalkar (Belagavi), Priyanka Jarkiholi (Chikkodi), Samyukta Patil (Bagalkot), Vinod Asuti (Hubballi-Dharwad), Prabha Mallikarjun (Davanagere), Rajashekhar Itnal (Koppal), Radhakrishna Doddamani (Kalaburagi), Sagar Khandre (Bidar) or Rajashekhar Patil, Padmaraj (Dakshina Kannada), Jayaprakash Hegde (Udupi), Soumya Reddy (Bengaluru South), Mansur Ali Khan (Bengaluru Central), Prof Rajiv Gowda (Bengaluru North), Lakshman (Mysuru), Kumar Nayak (Raichur), and Dr Anjali Nimbalkar (Uttara Kannada).
The list is not official and the party will announce the names on Wednesday. The marathon meeting of CEC, which was attended by several top leaders, including Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar, finalised the 16 candidates.
The names for eight constituencies were announced earlier. The candidates for Ballari, Chamarajanagar, Chikkaballapur and Kolar will be announced on Wednesday, the sources said.
If these names are final, then many of them hail from political families, including Jarkiholis of Gokak, Hebbalkar from Belagavi, Mallikarjun Kharge from Kalaburagi, Shivanand Patil from Vijayapura, Ramalinga Reddy from Bengaluru, Shamanur Shivashankarappa of Davangere and Eshwar Khandre from Kalaburagi.
Ramalinga: Dr Manjunath no match for DK Suresh
KGF: The All India Congress Committee will announce its list of candidates for the Lok Sabha polls on Wednesday and a meeting in this regard was held on Tuesday, said Transport Minister Ramalinga Reddy. After participating in the annual Brahmothsava at Sree Prasanna Lakshmi Venkatramana Swamy Temple on Tuesday, the senior leader attacked the Opposition BJP, saying the saffron party is now like a fish out of water as it is out of power in the state. On noted cardiologist Dr CN Manjunath contesting from Bengaluru Rural constituency, Reddy said, “He is a good man, a good doctor, but he will lose to DK Suresh as the latter has done many good works for the constituency.” On PM Narendra Modi’s jibe that there is a “chief Minister, shadow CM and super CM” in the Congress, he wondered why the BJP was breaking its head over this. “Let the PM and Home Minister Amit Shah campaign in Karnataka, the Congress will win in a majority of the constituencies,” he said. — V Velayudham
Jibe match: ‘Strong’ CM versus ‘weak’ PM
Bengaluru: Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Tuesday hit out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi for stating that there are ‘super CMs’ and ‘shadow CMs’ in Karnataka. “We have no super CMs, no shadow CMs. There is only one CM, that is a strong CM. I am not a weak PM like you,” Siddaramaiah stated while responding to PM Modi’s remarks during the BJP rally in Shivamogga on Monday. Siddaramaiah said though the PM’s followers hail him as ‘Vishwaguru’, he is repeatedly showing himself as a “weak PM”. Half a dozen BJP leaders in Karnataka have rebelled against the PM’s leadership after they were denied tickets to contest the Lok Sabha polls, he said. Party leaders are fighting on the streets, throwing mud at each other, and haven’t listened to the pleas of their party leaders, the CM said.