Bengaluru:
The Congress on Wednesday announced its fifth list of three candidates for the May 10 assembly polls, replacing the candidate against Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai in Shiggaon.
A day after fielding Mohd Yusuf Sawanur as its candidate from Shiggaon in Haveri district, the party nominated Yasir Ahmed Khan Fatan in his place.
The party has fielded AC Srinivas from Pulakeshinagar, replacing its sitting MLA R Akhand Srinivas Murthy, who today filed nomination as an independent candidate after it became clear that he would not be re-nominated.
Dalit Murthy had won the 2018 assembly elections with a record highest margin of 81,626 votes.
Murthy’s house and the DJ Halli police station were set ablaze by a violent mob in August 2020 over a social media post shared by his relative.
In Bangalore’s KR Puram, the Congress has fielded DK Mohan, a minister in the Basavaraj Bommai government, and BJP’s Bayarathi Suresh.
Interestingly, Suresh had won the seat in the 2018 assembly elections on a Congress ticket. He was among the 17 Congress-JD(S) MLAs who resigned, leading to the fall of the coalition government and paving the way for the BJP to come to power in 2019. In the subsequent by-elections, he won on a BJP ticket.
In Mulbagal, the party has fielded BC Muddugangadhar. In 2018, the seat was won by independent candidate H Nagesh, who is now the Congress candidate from the Mahadevapura constituency in Bengaluru.
The Congress has so far announced candidates for 219 of the total 224 seats (including Melukote where it is supporting a candidate from a different party).
Tomorrow is the last day for filing nominations.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)