BENGALURU: Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee president D K Shivakumar and other party leaders will hold a screening committee meeting on Thursday in Bengaluru to finalise the list of candidates for the remaining 100 seats. Opposition leader Siddaramaiah, AICC general secretary Randeep Singh Surjewala, B K Hariprasad, and M B Patil will also be present in the meeting.
The Karnataka Congress has already announced tickets to six women candidates and eight minority candidates in the first list for 124 seats announced earlier in the month. The names of Siddaramaiah and D K Shivakumar are included in the first list of 124 candidates. Siddaramaiah will be contesting from the Varuna constituency while Shivakumar will be the candidate from Kanakapura.
Earlier, Siddaramaiah had expressed interest to contest from Kolar constituency, but the Congress high command instructed him to drop the plan following disagreements between the party’s local leaders in the constituency. The party has fielded M Roopakala from the Kolar Gold Field constituency.
Meanwhile, the Election Commission of India announced the schedule for the Karnataka Assembly elections. The polling will take place in a single phase on May 10, Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar said on Wednesday.
The counting of votes will be done on May 13, he said. Karnataka, which has 224 seats in the Assembly currently, has 119 MLAs of the ruling BJP, while Congress has 75 and JD(S) has 28 seats. (ANI)