The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Saturday announced Baburao Chinchansur, a prominent Koli (Kabbaliga) community leader from the Kalyana Karnataka region, as its candidate for the byelection to be held to fill the seat vacated by C.M. Ibrahim in the Legislative Council.
The BJP’s Central Election Committee also announced Dharmendra Singh Senthwar and Nirmala Paswan for the vacated posts in Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council along with Mr. Chinchansur’s name for the Karnataka Legislative Council.
The selection of Mr. Chinchansur is widely viewed as the BJP’s reward for quitting the Congress and joining it and for his contributions to defeat the Congress veteran M. Mallikarjun Kharge in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
Mr. Chinchansur entered the Assembly as a Congress member in 1989 by defeating Vishwanath Patil Hebbal of the Janata Party at Chittapur segment in Kalaburagi district. He won the next two Assembly elections (1994 and 1999) from the same constituency and against the same candidate to register a hattrick win. He had handled seven departments as a Minister in S.M. Krishna’s Council of Ministers.
He lost the 2004 Assembly election from Chittapur against Mr. Hebbal and won the next two elections from Gurmitkal (2008 and 2013). He again lost the Assembly election in 2018 from Gurmitkal against Janata Dal candidate Nagangouda Kandkur.
He was among the several Congress leaders from the region such as Malikayya Guttedar, Umesh Jadhav, and Ambaraya Ashtagi, to quit the Congress and join the BJP in 2019 and work against Mr. Kharge in the 2019 Lok Sabha election. He was rewarded with the posts of State Vice-president of the BJP’s OBC Morcha and later as the president of Nijasharana Ambigara Chowdaiah Development Corporation.
