Bengaluru: The Congress party on Sunday nominated its senior leader, B.K. Hariprasad for the Bangalore South Lok Sabha constituency which is considered to be a BJP bastion for the last four decades in the state.
Mr Hariprasad who is a Rajya Sabha member, is not new to the constituency as he had lost out to former BJP strongman late H.N. Ananth Kumar in the 1999 Lok Sabha polls from Bangalore South. Mr Hariprasad has been a staunch loyalist of the Nehru-Gandhi family and his association with the party dates back to his college days when he was associated with the youth Congress.
He has been mostly based in New Delhi and served the party in various capacities as AICC secretary and AICC general secretary. He was also party incharge of Gujarat when PM Modi took over the reins of that state.
Soon after his candidature was announced, an elated Mr Hariprasad said, “I have completed 40 years in the Congress. There was no specific Lok Sabha seat to contest from. Party national president Rahul Gandhi and Karnataka Congress president Dinesh Gundurao decided that I should contest from Bengaluru South seat and I am very happy to contest from there.”
Exuding confidence about his victory this time, Mr Hariprasad argued that the circumstances now were different from those of 1999 and things were in his favour. The Congress party has released candidates for 18 of the 20 Lok Sabha constituencies it is contesting in the state under a seat-sharing agreement with the JD(S), which will contest the remaining eight seats. The candidates for Dharwad and Benagluru South were not named. Late Union parliamentary affairs minister Ananth Kumar was the sitting MP from the prestigious Bengaluru South constituency for a record six times since 1996.
Though the BJP is yet to name its candidate from the seat, Kumar's widow Tejaswini is tipped to enter the fray in a bid to retain the seat, riding on the sympathy wave for her husband and the popularity of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
