The BJP MLA of Kundapur Assembly constituency Halady Srinivas Shetty has announced that he will not be contesting in the upcoming Assembly elections to be held next month. In a letter written on April 3, the 71-year-old legislator said he had chosen not to contest of his own volition and did not specify any reasons for doing so. Srinivas Shetty who is a five-time MLA thanked his supporters and constituents and said he had ensured social justice for all the people in his constituency, who had helped him win by large margins each time.
Srinivas won four terms as a BJP candidate and once, as an independent candidate in 2013. He resigned in 2012 after he was not made a minister in the Jagadish Shettar cabinet and Kota Srinivas Poojary was chosen in his stead. Srinivas Shetty had been called to Bengaluru for the swearing-in ceremony, after being assured that he would be inducted into the cabinet, but at the last minute he found that it was Srinivas Poojary who had been chosen. An upset Shetty later resigned due to the slight.
He joined BJP ahead of the 2018 Assembly elections and won the elections again. In 2019, when the BJP formed the government, Srinivas Shetty had stated that he should be considered for the ministerial berth based on his contributions to the party and his work towards social justice rather than caste equations. Incidentally, Kota Srinivas Poojary was once again picked to represent Udupi district.
Though Srinivas Shetty in his letter did not indicate any preference for a choice of candidate for Kundapur constituency, media reports stated that he was in favour of promoting the candidacy of Kiran Kodgi, vice-president of Karnataka Food and Civil Supplies Corporation and the son of late Gopalakrishna Kodgi, a veteran BJP leader.