JD(S) to contest 3 of 28 Lok Sabha seats in Karnataka, BJP to fight from rest

Though the BJP could have given them one or two more seats, the former CM said that he does not “have the strength to manage elections. Since 2007, for 17 years, I have run this party alone with guidance from Deve Gowda.”

Confirming speculations of a JD(S) candidate being fielded on a BJP ticket, Kumaraswamy said that Dr C N Manjunath will be fielded from Bengaluru Rural. Manjunath is the son-in-law of JD(S) supremo and former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda and the brother-in-law of Kumaraswamy.

“We did not want to make him a candidate. Neither did he want to contest the election,” Kumaraswamy said, claiming that it was due to media campaigns that Manjunath emerged as a candidate.

Manjunath retired as the Director of the Jayadeva Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences and Research in February this year. He is expected to be pitted against D K Suresh, the lone Congress MP from Karnataka to win the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. Suresh is the brother of Deputy Chief Minister and Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee president D K Shivakumar.

Manjunath is scheduled to meet BJP Parliamentary Board member B S Yediyurappa during the day and is expected to join the BJP shortly.

Kumaraswamy’s revelation about the seat-sharing came while he was campaigning for his nephew Prajwal Revanna, a candidate from Hassan. He is contesting the polls for the second time and was the only JD(S) candidate to win in 2019. As a section of Hassan BJP leaders are learnt to be unhappy about backing Revanna as the coalition candidate, Kumaraswamy requested the BJP workers to back the JD(S) candidate as he would campaign for all BJP candidates across the state.

“JD(S) cannot be finished off by anyone. In the Chitradurga, Bijapur and Raichur constituencies, we have two and half lakh voters. At Gulbarga, we have 1.9 lakh…So, I request the BJP workers. In the past, the Congress slit our throat,” he said, referring to the defeat faced by the Congress-JD(S) coalition in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

Kumaraswamy said that he will have to undergo an operation on March 21 at Chennai for which two surgeons from the United States of America will fly in. “I will rest for three days and then start campaigning again,” he said.