SON NOT TO CONTEST POLLS FROM VARUNA SEAT: YEDDYURAPPA
BJP state president B S Yeddyurappa on Monday announced that his son B Y Vijayendra will not contest the Karnataka assembly elections from the Varuna constituency in Mysuru against Congress Chief Minister Siddaramaiah's son Yatindra.
Yeddyurappa made the announcement at a party meeting at Nanjanagudu, near Mysuru, which immediately triggered protests by his supporters who flung chairs and furniture and were only dispersed by police. Vijayendra, who has been widely tipped to be the BJP candidate from Varuna, did not figure in a list of seven candidates released by the BJP Monday for 11 seats where the party had not nominated a candidate as yet. The BJP has not named a candidate yet for Varuna and three other seats, including Badami – Chief Minister Siddaramaiah's second constituency. Also missing in Monday's list is Shobha Karandlaje, a member of parliament and a close aide of Yeddyurappa. The BJP instead named film star Jaggesh from the Yeshwanthapura constituency in Bengaluru, where Karandlaje hoped to be nominated. The denial of ticket to Karandlaje was expected as the BJP leadership had indicated that it did not want to face too many by-elections in the run-up to Lok Sabha polls in 2019 particularly after losses suffered in Lok Sabha by-polls in Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. Apart from Karandlaje, Yeddyurappa had pushed to nominate Vijayendra even as his older son Raghavendra is already active in politics and is the sitting MLA from the Shikharipura seat which was vacated by Yeddyurappa when he was elected to parliament in 2014.
The Varuna constituency which has a sizeable Lingayat population – the community to which Yeddyurappa belongs – was considered the ideal ground to initiate Vijayendra into politics. Yeddyurappa had fielded his close aide Siddalinga Swamy from the seat on a ticket of the breakaway KJP party that he floated in 2013.
Sources said that Yeddyurappa was so confident that his son Vijayendra would be given the green signal to contest the Varuna seat after several weeks of campaigning that he actually issued the B- Form for filing the nomination to Vijayendra. The filing of the nomination was however stalled on Monday after the BJP high command did not clear the candidature of Vijayendra.