The Congress on Thursday held a legislative party meeting and prepared a list of eligible candidates, who are likely to get the party's ticket to contest in the Lok Sabha elections. According to Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee President Dinesh Gundu Rao, the leaders of the Congress and JD(S) will put together a consolidated list of potential candidates to be sent to the high command for approval. "A meeting will be held on March 11, where the final candidates would be selected," Dinesh Gundu Rao said.
Congress insiders say that the party's leaders are not willing to give up the seats which they had won in 2014. "If we give up the seats which we had won against the JD(S), we would essentially be handing over our voter bases to them and this is not in the interest of the party," a Congress source said.
TNM has accessed the list which was prepared and below are the details of the shortlisted candidates
Bidar: Eshwar Khandre, CM Ibrahim and Vijay Singh
Bagalkot: Bayakka Meti, Veena Kashappanavar, Ajay Kumat Sarnaik
Vijayapura: Raju Alagooru, Prakash Rathod
Belagavi: Anjali Nimbalkar, Channaraj Hebbalkar, Ramesh Jarkiholi, Vivekrao Patil
Dharwad: Vinay Kulkarni (INC), Shekar Sanadi (INC, son of IG Sanadi), Veeranna Mattikatti
Haveri: Basavaraj Shivannavar, Saleem Ahmed, DR Patil
Davangere: SS Mallikarjun, HM Revanna
Uttara Kannada: Prashant Deshpande, Nivedit Alva (Margaret Alva's son), Bheemanna Naik
Udupi-Chikkamagaluru: Arati Krishna, Vijaykumar, Pramod Madhwaraj, BK Hariprakash
Mangaluru: Ramanath Rai, Ivan D'Souza, Moinuddin Bava, Vinay Kumar Sorake
Bengaluru Central: Rizwan Arshad, BK Hariprakash, Roshan Baig, HT Sangliana, Saleem Ahmed
Bengaluru South: Priya Krishna, Ramalinga Reddy
Bengaluru North: C Narayanaswamy, MR Seetaram, BL Shankar
Mysuru: CH Vijayshankar, Suraj Hegde