Candidates back out after getting ticket for contest
BENGALURU: Congress leader MH Ambareesh’s announcement on Tuesday that he would not defend his seat of Mandya even after getting the ticket highlighted a trend of candidates, across party lines, refusing to contest the assembly election this time despite being nominated.
Ambareesh, a former Union minister and popular film star, said he was refusing to contest because of his advancing age. “I will always be grateful to the people of Mandya for the support they have given me. My party also did not issue a B -form (nomination form) to anybody else till now, that shows their respect for me,” he said.
Another Congress leader and state minister for planning MR Seetharam, too, refused to contest saying his decision was based on his lack of preparedness.
“I last contested elections in 2008, when I lost. In 2013, I wasn’t given a ticket but later they made me a member of the Legislative Council and a minister. I was only informed that I would contest the polls this time about 15 days ago. This left me with very little time to prepare,” Seetharam said.
State Congress working president Dinesh Gundu Rao said, “In Ambareesh’s case, we respected his seniority and decided to give him a ticket. We also left the final decision of contesting to him because he is a very popular leader,” he said.
“Seetharam, meanwhile, had made it clear a while ago that he did not wish to contest. But we took a decision to field him because we felt he could give the BJP candidate a tough fight,” Gundu Rao said.
Even in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), two candidates have refused to contest. Senior BJP leader V Somanna’s son Arun, who was given the ticket from Arsikere in Hassan district, and BK Manjunath from Sira have refused. Repeated attempts to reach Arun Somanna and Manjunath were unsuccessful.
Party spokesperson S Prakash said this was an unfortunate development and could be explained by the increase in expenditure and the lack of confidence of the candidate of a win.
Most people south of the Vindhyas are touchy about what they see as the imposition of Hindi and proud of their own mother tongues. So when P Muralidhar Rao, the national general secretary of BJP who is in charge of the state tweeted in Hindi to chief minister Siddaramiah, taunting him about contesting a second seat, the savvy social media team of the CM was quick to retort with a “please tweet in Kannada or English. We don’t understand Hindi sir.”
This touched a chord even among Kannadigas who may not necessarily have been the CM’S sympathisers.
Rao was quick to correct himself and tweeted in Kannada saying “irrespective of wherever you contest from, we will make Karnataka free of Congress,” but the damage was done.
KThe Ballari Reddy brothers are pretty famous or infamous as some would argue, having played a key role in helping the BJP form its first government in South India in 2008. While the best known among them, Gali Janaradhana Reddy, a mining baron and former minister in the BS Yeddyurappa government is currently out on bail after spending three years in jail, his younger brother Somashekara and elder brother Karunakara are contesting elections from Ballari district.
However it has emerged that yet another Reddy family member is contesting elections, again on a BJP ticket. Lallesh Reddy, said to be a nephew of Janardhana is the BJP candidate from BTM Layout constitutency in Bengaluru. Lallesh, a unknown figure in Karnataka political circles till he received this nomination was duly accompanied by his ‘Uncle’ Janardhana Reddy while filing his papers. He will be taking on senior Congress leader and home minister Ramalinga Reddy. H Muniyappa, the former union minister of state for micro, small and medium enterprises in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s cabinet, is a Congress heavyweight. He has been undefeated in Kolar Lok Sabha constitutency since 1991 representing it consecutively for seven times and his writ runs large in the assembly segments comprising his parliamentary constituency.
So when he asked that the Kolar Gold Fields (SC) reserved constituency be given to his daughter M Roopakala, she was declared the Congress candidate. However what surprised observers is that his second daughter M Nandini sprang a surprise by filing her papers as an independent from the Mulbagal (SC) constituency. G Manjunath is the official Congress candidate from Mulbagal. With no clarity from the party till date, it remains to be seen if both of Muniyappa’s daughters will fight in the election.