The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party on Sunday announced its third list of candidates comprising 37 names for the Assembly elections.
With this, the party has announced candidates for 212 constituencies of the 224 which are going to polls. Earlier, the party had released two lists covering 175 Assembly constituencies.
Three missing segments
The striking feature of the third list is that it does not cover the constituencies represented by three tainted MLAs giving clear indications that the party is still unable to take a final call on whether to give ticket to three of its MLAs — Y. Sampangi (KGF), Katta Subramanya Naidu (Hebbal) and S.N. Krishnaiah Setty (Malur) — who are facing charges of corruption and land scams.
The party was supposed to take a decision on Sunday on whether to allow the family members of these politically powerful people to contest the polls as a face-saving measure or to field themselves.
But, it is learnt that there was no unanimity on any of the options though party national president Rajnath Singh has reportedly advised the State party leadership to keep the tainted personalities away from the contest.
From Shantinagar
Bangalore Mayor D. Venkatesh Murthy has been fielded from Shantinagar while the former Deputy Mayor S. Harish will contest from Mahalakshmi Layout. Janata Dal (S) corporator Padmanabha Reddy who joined the BJP only on Saturday amid protest from local workers has been fielded from Sarvajnanagar.
Similarly, the party has chosen entrepreneur Uday Garudachar to contest from Chickpet which is represented by Hemachandra Sagar.
Manifesto
Meanwhile, the BJP is learnt to be getting ready to announce its poll manifesto on April 18.
Party central leader and key-strategist Arun Jaitley, who arrived in Bangalore on Sunday with national general secretary and Karnataka in-charge Dharmendra Pradhan for a second round of consultations with party leaders for finalising the poll strategy, is said to be giving the finishing touches to the manifesto.
