In Bengaluru Rural, BJP candidate’s namesake emerges as Congress MP files papers

Bengaluru Rural seat is expected to see a fight between two candidates with same names. While one of them is well-known cardiologist Dr. CN Manjunath, who successfully built the government-owned Jayadeva Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences & Research in Bengaluru into one of Asia’s largest heart hospitals.

The cardiologist, as a BJP candidate, is facing off DK Suresh, the only Congress candidate to have won the 2019 LS polls in Karnataka. He filed nomination papers in Ramanagara after leading a procession along with senior party leaders and ministers.

As political analysts struggled to predict which of the two candidates has an upper hand this time, another Dr. CN Manjunath, with the same father’s name, has announced he will contest too, from the Bahujan Samajwadi Party (BSP). While one is a medical doctor, the other claims to have an honorary degree.


Both Manjunaths hail from the same district, and the same taluk. Social media is abuzz over the coincidence, with netizens raising the point that the resemblance may confuse voters.

Who would be behind this? Your guess is as good as ours.

The cardiologist Manjunath is also the son-in-law of JDS national president, the ex-PM HD Deve Gowda, while his political opponent Suresh is the brother of Deputy CM DK Shivakumar.

This was not the first time they were facing off against the Deve Gowda family, Shivakumar said. “We got a woman elected against Deve Gowda (in the LS polls in Kanakapura in 2004). I have faced Kumaraswamy in an election. Suresh had against Anita Kumaraswamy…People have been supporting us ever since,” he said.

Suresh had defeated former MLA Anitha Kumaraswamy in the Lok Sabha 2013 bypolls, after her husband and former CM Kumaraswamy resigned from Lok Sabha following his win in the Assembly polls that year.