Congress Grapples with Candidate Selection Challenges as Ministers and MLAs Hesitate to Contest
GG News Bureau
New Delhi, 19th March. The dates for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections have been announced by the Election Commission. This resulted in an even greater flurry of political activity. Congress has only been able to declare 82 candidates thus far, compared to 267 candidates fielded by the BJP. Congress is having a lot of trouble choosing its candidates. The Congress is having trouble identifying “winnable” candidates as a result of some ministers and MLAs expressing hesitation to run in the Karnataka Lok Sabha elections. Congress unveiled its slate of candidates for seven seats 12 days ago, but the list for the remaining twenty-one seats is still pending.
Candidate names for the 21 seats will be disclosed
Congress has been announcing candidates for seven seats for the past ten days; the remaining twenty-one seats are still being chosen. The initial Congress list, which was made public on March 8, contained no names of Ministers or Legislators. Party insiders claim that the Congress’s top brass is attempting to persuade a few Ministers and MLAs to run for office because the party is having difficulty finding candidates who can win in a number of places. Home Minister and senior Congress leader G Parameshwara recently stated that talks are taking place within the party to field seven or eight Ministers.
The challenges that the party faces
It is rumored that certain Ministers are pressuring their relatives to run for office rather than themselves. Sources claim that the party leadership is concerned about the public’s reaction if any of their relatives are nominated. However, the Congress leadership, which includes MP Rahul Gandhi and senior party leader Mallikarjun Kharge, has now been tasked with deciding whether to field Ministers or members of their families.
The candidates could be revealed on the 19th or 20th
The final step of the candidate selection process has been reached, according to State Congress President and Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar’s statement on Saturday. “Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra concluded on Saturday,” he says.
The leaders of the India Bloc met in public on Sunday, and the purpose of our meeting on March 19 is to select the candidates’ names. On either the evening of March 19 or the early hours of March 20, we will reveal all of our candidates. H C Mahadevappa from Chamarajanagar, K H Muniyappa from Kolar, B Nagendra from Bellary, Satish Jarkiholi from Belgaum, Ishwar Khandre from Bidar and Krishna Byre Gowda from Bangalore North are the candidates the Congress is reportedly planning to field.
Minister is reluctant to run for office
Nonetheless, practically none of the Ministers are willing to run for office. It has been reported that some people have offered the names of their relatives, promising to guarantee their success. Reportedly, Gowda informed the party hierarchy that he has no intention of running for office. In 2019 and 2009, he was defeated by Bengaluru North and Bengaluru South. Mahadevappa is requesting a Chamarajanagar ticket for his son Sunil Bose in the meantime. Previously the President of the party’s state unit, Parameshwara, had declared recently that Mahadevappa should not run for office and that his son should receive the ticket. Whether it is to be Mahadevappa’s son or someone else will ultimately be decided by the party. It is not possible to exert pressure on someone who chooses not to run for office.
It is reported that a senior minister named Muniyappa, a seven-time Member of Parliament and Former Union Minister who entered state politics following his defeat in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, entered his son-in-law Shashidhar JE in the Kolar seat. Similar discussions are taking place regarding the names of Satish Jarkiholi’s daughter Priyanka Jarkiholi for Chikkodi, Lakshmi Hebbalkar’s son Mrinal Hebbalkar for Belgaum, Nagendra’s brother Venkatesh Prasad for Bellary, and Ishwar Khandre’s son Sagar Khandre for Bidar.
Lack of a satisfactory report received
Initially, the Congress had given Ministers the task of finding possible candidates; however, Shivakumar claimed that the reports they had received were inadequate. He had added that in order to find candidates who could win the party had chosen to carry out another survey. Shivkumar, who has made no secret of his desire to become Chief Minister amid rumors of a leadership change in the middle of the Assembly term, will have to see how well the Congress performs in this election.
When the Congress party was in power in the state in coalition with the Janata Dal (Secular), a leader of the party said that the party had lost the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Since the party’s chances at the national level continue to be bleak, many senior leaders have expressed their desire not to run in the Lok Sabha elections. Numerous prominent figures, such as M Mallikarjun Kharge, Veerappa Moily, and Muniyappa, were forced to concede defeat in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
The result of the 2019 elections
The BJP has already declared its nominees for 20 seats. The party has not yet announced its choices for eight seats, three of which are probably going to go to JDS, an alliance partner, in the cities of Kolar, Hassan, and Mandya. Karnataka has 28 seats in the Lok Sabha overall. In the 2019 general elections, the BJP secured 25 seats, and the party’s endorsed independent candidate also prevailed. Each party had won one seat in the elections; the JDS and Congress were jointly running a coalition government at the time.
