Kota Srinivas Poojary
The anti-incumbency factor is said to have made the BJP deny party ticket to its incumbent Members of Parliament in Dakshina Kannada and Udupi-Chikkamagaluru Lok Sabha constituencies on Wednesday.
The party picked an ex-serviceman and secretary of its State unit Brijesh Chowta, 43, to contest from Dakshina Kannada by replacing the incumbent and former president of its State unit Nalin Kumar Kateel.
It chose Leader of the Opposition in the Legislative Council Kota Srinivas Poojary to face the election in Udupi-Chikkamagaluru by replacing the incumbent and Union Minister Shobha Karandlaje who has been fielded from Bengaluru North.
The BJP which wrested the Dakshina Kannada constituency (erstwhile Mangaluru constituency) from the Congress in the 1991 election has retained the seat for eight consecutive terms (1996, 1998, 1999, 2004, 2009, 2014 and 2019). The party has announced that its target to win the seat for the ninth consecutive term is by a margin of more than three lakh votes. The winning margin of its candidate Mr. Kateel, a three-term MP, in the last Lok Sabha election was 2.74 lakh votes.
The party opened its account in the present Udupi-Chikkamagaluru constituency in 1998 with I.M. Jayarama Shetty grabbing the seat from Congress. Since then the party has won this seat for four terms (2004, 2009, 2014, and 2019). The Congress won in 1999 (candidate Vinay Kumar Sorake) and in the byelection in 2012 (candidate K. Jayaprakash Hegde).
Mr. Chowta who was a Captain in the Indian Army served in the Army (Short Service Commission) from 2003 to 2010. He did his B.Sc at St. Aloysius College, Mangaluru in 2002 and Executive Business Management Programme at the Indian Institute of Management, Indore in 2011. He hails from Talapady.
He was the general secretary of the Dakshina Kannada unit of the party from 2016-2019. Mr. Chowta was also the general secretary of the party’s Dakshina Kannada District Yuva Morcha from 2013-2016. He was the District Executive Committee Member from 2019 to 2023.
Mr. Chowta has been organising Mangaluru Kambala for the past six years and is associated with organising Mangaluru Litfest.
Earlier as a Minister in the BJP government in the State, Mr. Poojary handled the portfolios of muzrai, fisheries, ports and inland transport, social and backward classes welfare. He was also the Leader of the House in the Legislative Council.
