Kharge fighting shy of LS polls, buzz grows over Congress ticket for his brother-in-law from Gulbarga

After Kharge’s name did not figure in the first list, one of the key questions making the rounds in the Congress circles is whether Kharge would contest the Lok Sabha polls from his Gulbarga constituency or not.

A nine-time MLA, Kharge, who won from the Gulbarga Lok Sabha seat in the 2009 and 2014 polls, suffered his first electoral defeat in five decades of his political career in the 2019 parliamentary elections.

In June 2020, Kharge was elected unopposed to the Rajya Sabha from Karnataka. In February 2021, the Congress appointed him the Leader of Opposition in the Upper House. He went on to get elected as the AICC president in October 2022.

Amid the buzz about his candidature in the upcoming elections, Kharge has dismissed suggestions regarding senior party leaders shying away from fighting the polls, claiming his willingness to contest if the party workers wanted it.

When asked about senior Congress leaders opting out of the poll fray, Kharge told reporters Tuesday, “It’s wrong that we are backing out. I am 83 years old, you (journalists) retire at 65… So I am 83,” adding that “if they (Congress workers) say then I will definitely fight”.

Kharge’s remarks came amid growing speculation that his brother-in-law Radhakrishna Doddamani would be given the Congress ticket from Gulbarga.

In 2019, Kharge had lost to the BJP’s Umesh Jadhav, a former Congress legislator who had joined the BJP weeks ahead of the Lok Sabha polls. In its second list of candidates, the BJP renominated Jadhav from Gulbarga.

Congress sources said Doddamani’s candidature from the Gulbarga seat is “almost certain”, which would be his poll debut.

Doddamani, the younger brother of Kharge’s wife Radhabai Kharge, is a businessman who has worked behind the scenes in managing the Congress veteran’s various election campaigns over the years.

In a recent Congress meeting at Kalaburagi, sources said party workers insisted that Kharge be the candidate from the Gulbarga seat.

However, Kharge is learnt to be not too keen on contesting the election, maintaining that his position as the Congress national president warranted his lead role in campaigning for the party candidates across the country. “It will be either Kharge or Doddamani. But we all want Kharge to contest,” a party worker from Gulbarga said.
Sources say Kharge’s reluctance to contest the polls also stems from fear as losing a second time from the seat would damage both the Congress and his career.

Kharge won from the Gurmitkal Assembly seat, which was then part of undivided Kalaburagi district in the Gulbarga belt, for nine consecutive times from 1972 to 2008.

Sources said the Congress is likely to take the decision on its Gulbarga nominee at the last moment.
Among the Congress’s Karnataka faces likely to be named in the party’s upcoming third list of candidates are Rajashekar Patil from the Bidar constituency, Rajashekar Hitnal from Koppal and M Laxman from the Mysore-Kodagu seat.

Patil had been a minister in the erstwhile Congress-JD(S) coalition government and is currently the MLA from Humnabad in Bidar. The BJP has fielded Union Minister of State for Chemicals and Fertilisers Bhagawanth Khuba from the Bidar seat.

Hitnal had lost in the 2019 polls when BJP had won 25 of the 28 seats in the state.

Laxman, if fielded, would make his Lok Sabha poll debut. Known as an aide of Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, he would face Yaduveer Wadiyar of the BJP, who belongs to the erstwhile Mysore royal family.

Former Karnataka State Backward Classes chairman and minister K Jayaprakash Hegde, who switched from the BJP to the Congress Tuesday, is likely to be the grand old party’s candidate from the Udupi-Chikmagalur seat, where the BJP is yet to declare its candidate.