Putting an end to weeks of speculation, the Core Committee of Janata Dal (Secular) on Tuesday cleared the names of it’s State president and former Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy as the candidate for the Mandya Lok Sabha constituency in the Vokkaliga heartland where a high voltage poll battle is expected. While it also cleared the candidature of Prajwal Revanna for Hassan seat, the candidate for Kolar seat has been kept pending, party sources said.
Three former CMs in fray
With the party’s decision, the State will see the contest of three former Chief Ministers in this election with the other two being BJP’s Basavaraj Bommai from Haveri and Jagadish Shettar from Belagavi.
A formal announcement of the candidates will be made on Wednesday once the party supremo and former Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda returns to Bengaluru, party sources said. In the seat sharing arrangement with the NDA ally BJP, JD(S) will contest in three seats and BJP will contest in 25 seats.
Meanwhile, confusion still remains over the Kolar seat as Mr. Gowda named Mallesh Babu as the party candidate during his interaction with reporters in Hassan while party sources in Bengaluru said that “under changed circumstances”, the party is still evaluating the prospects of Mr. Babu and former Devanahalli legislator Nisarga Narayanswamy, both of whom are keen to contest. According to Mr. Kumaraswamy, besides three known aspirants from the party, three more have come forward to contest along with sitting BJP MP Muniswamy.
‘To save party’
While the party was divided over Mr. Kumaraswamy contesting in the Lok Sabha elections, eventually the Core Committee cleared his name. Over the last two days, Mr. Kumaraswamy had been involved in convincing his Chennapatna electors and party workers that it had become inevitable for him to contest this election from Mandya to “save the party.” Mr. Kumaraswamy, who represents Chennapatna constituency in the Assembly, is also the leader of the Janata Dal Legislative Party.
“Though we wanted to field either (former Melukote legislator) C.S. Puttaraju or Nikhil Kumaraswamy, workers have put faith in me,” said Mr. Kumaraswamy.
In a high voltage battle during 2019 parliamentary polls, the former Chief Minister’s son Nikhil Kumaraswamy had lost to BJP-backed independent Sumalatha Ambareesh from Mandya. Though Ms. Sumalatha had lobbied hard to get the ticket from Mandya from the BJP, the saffron party allowed it’s ally to contest from the Vokkaliga heartland. She had met Prime Minister Narendra Modi among many senior BJP leaders to push her case. Speculations are now rife on her future plans with the actor-turned politician remaining silent over the last few days.
No manifesto
Mr. H.D. Kumaraswamy on Tuesday indicated that the Janata Dal (Secular) may not release the party’s manifesto for this election. This is in contrast with what the party supremo Mr. Deve Gowda had said earlier that the manifesto, including the commitment to construct Mekedatu balancing reservoir, would be released.
Mr. Gowda had urged Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and BJP leader B.S. Yediyurappa to do the same in response to the DMK manifesto that has said the project would not be allowed.
Joint coordination meeting on March 29
In an effort to achieve coordination between the leaders and workers of Janata Dal (Secular) and BJP, a meeting has been convened in Bengaluru on March 29. The meeting was scheduled after a discussion between H.D. Kumaraswamy and BJP State president B.Y. Vijayendra on Tuesday.
