The names of Union Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas M. Veerappa Moily and the former Union Minister B. Janardhana Poojary figure in the Congress’s second list of 10 candidates for the Lok Sabha elections in the State released on Thursday.
The party, however, has ignored veteran leader and former Railway Minister C.K. Jaffer Sharief’s claim for ticket as it has nominated Karnataka Youth Congress president Rizwan Arshad for the Bangalore Central constituency.
With this, the party has announced the candidates for 24 of the 28 constituencies in the State.
Mr. Moily, former Chief Minister, has been re-nominated for the Chickballapur seat, where he will take on the former Labour Minister B.N. Bache Gowda of the Bharatiya Janata Party. The Janata Dal (Secular) is yet to announce its candidate.
Mr. Poojary, who registered a convincing win in the party’s primary, has been re-nominated for the Dakshina Kannada constituency, where he will take on Nalin Kumar Kateel of the BJP. Mr. Poojary lost to Mr. Kateel in 2009.
Minister for Sugar and Small Scale Industry Prakash B. Hukkeri has been re-nominated for the Chikkodi constituency.
The other six candidates whose names were announced on Thursday are: Lakshmi Hebbalkar – Belgaum, Ajay Kumar Sarnaik – Bagalkot, B.V. Naik – Racihur (ST), Basavaraj Hitnal – Koppal, Manjunath Bhandary – Shimoga, and Chandrappa – Chitradurga (SC).
The names of candidates for Bangalore North, Haveri, Uttara Kannada and Dharwad are expected to be announced in the third list. Too many ticket contenders in Haveri, Uttara Kannada and Dharwad is said to be the major reason for the postponement of the announcement of the names.
The former MP C. Narayanaswamy, who switched loyalties to the Congress from the JD(S), emerged victorious in the primary election held by the party to choose its candidate for the Bangalore North seat on Thursday.
