Bengaluru:The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Sunday released a list of 72 candidates for the upcoming Karnataka elections, due to be held on 12 May.
The central election committee of the BJP met in Delhi late on Sunday to decide the candidate list. The meeting was led by party president Amit Shah and attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Karnataka state president B.S.Yeddyurappa, Home minister Rajnath Singh and other senior leaders of the party.
The 72 names include that of Yeddyurappa, S.R.Bommai, Umesh Katti, B.Sriramalu and Govind Karjol among others. The party had also announced tickets to C.P.Yogeshwar, Malikaiah Guttedar and Mallikarjuna Khuba and A.S.Patil Nadahalli, all of who had joined the party recently.
BJP becomes the second party after Janata Dal (Secular) to announce a limited candidate list for the 12 May polls, that is fast turning into one of the most fiercely contested polls in recent times.
The list comes on the day that Congress president Rahul Gandhi was in Bengaluru and attacking the BJP on issues of corruption and other serious charges.
The BJP is trying to emulate the success of its recent outings in Uttar Pradesh among other states while the Congress is using all its might to stop the right from taking control of Karnataka, one of the last few states still under its rule.
Karnataka has turned into a three way contest between the JD (S), Congress and the BJP, though the last two have been targeting each other. Congress is hoping to retain Karnataka and with it revive the party nationally after it was reduced to double digits in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. Karnataka is one of the last big states to go the polls before Lok Sabha elections, which is being considered an indicator of which way the country is expected to vote.