Karnataka polls: Siddaramaiah in delhi for list of candidates

NEW DELHI: Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah and PCC president Parameswar reached Delhi on Monday as the AICC establishment accelerated the exercise of finalising Congress candidates for the assembly elections.

AICC screening committee headed by Madhusudan Mistry and comprising AICC general secretary KC Venugopal and the Karnataka duo met later in the evening to fast-track the elections process. The CM and PCC chief are also expected to meet Congress president Rahul Gandhi.

With BJP announcing the first batch of 72 candidates, the Congress central election committee is set to begin the process of naming Congress candidates soon. Indications are that the Congress may re-nominate majority of sitting MLAs.


Party leaders said Muslims, Dalits, Lingayats and OBCs could win the main chunk of Congress nominations. While Dalits and Muslims are part of the traditional Congress base in the state, Siddaramaiah’s outreach to the Lingayat community — the caste to which his BJP challenger Yeddyurappa belongs to and which forms a major social base of the saffron party — has been evident from the way a committee set up by the state government recommended ‘minority status’ to it. The proposal is before the Union home ministry and BJP is looking at ways at countering the political googly from the chief minister.