NEW DELHI: Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai will chair the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) campaign committee for the upcoming Assembly polls, according to a list released by the party’s central unit on Friday. Union Ministers Shobha Karandlaje and Bhagwant Khuba will be the convener and co-convener of the election management committee, respectively.
Apart from Bommai, the campaign committee will have veteran leader and former Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa Union Ministers Pralhad Joshi and A Narayanaswamy, party state president Nalin Kumar Kateel, former Union Minister D V Sadananda Gowda, former state minister K S Eshwrappa and former CM Jagadish Shettar. Ministers R Ashoka, Dr C N Ashwath Narayan and B Sriramulu are also on the panel.
Former CM Yediyurappa’s son B Y Vijayendra, who is the state vice-president is also part of this committee. Vijayendra has already been made the convener of all the morchas in view of the ensuing polls. Bangalore Central MP P C Mohan party national general secretary C T Ravi are also on the committee.
The Shobha Karandlaje-led poll management panel will have state leaders like Ashwathnarayan, Siddharaju and Ravi Kumar, who are all state general secretaries. One prominent name on the list is that of Tejaswini Ananth Kumar, wife of deceased Union Minister Ananth Kumar. The announcement by BJP national president JP Nadda came within weeks of the Assembly elections in the state, where the ruling BJP will be locked in a fierce political battle with the grand old party, Congress.
The ruling party is pinning its hopes in the upcoming polls on the experience of Yediyurappa, who has had a political career full of twists and turns and controversies too.Yediyurappa is believed to have played a cardinal role in bringing the BJP to power in 2008 for the first time in Karnataka.
He resigned in 2011 as Chief Minister after being allegedly involved in a case of corruption, only to be acquitted in 2016. After forming his own political outfit, he merged it with BJP after a brief period and contested the 2014 Lok Sabha polls from Shivamogga and won.
Yediyurappa later contested to win the 2018 Karnataka Assembly polls when he took oath as Chief Minister for two days and then resigned because the party was unable to prove a majority. A year later, Yediyurappa was able to stage a coup and 18 MLAs defected to join the BJP from the opposition Congress and took oath as Chief Minister for the fourth time in his career.
In another turn of events in July 2021, the veteran leader, under the instructions of the party’s top brass, stepped down as Chief Minister and paved the way for Basavaraj Bommai. Yediyurappa has also served as the BJP Karnataka president on three occasions. (ANI)