The Congress party has announced its first list of 39 candidates on Friday, March 8 for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections and seven names from Karnataka have been announced. The names of DK Suresh, the lone Congress candidate to win in 2019 and Geeta Shivarajkumar, wife of Kannada veteran actor Shivaraj Kumar, also feature in the list. Congress’s list comes almost a week after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) released its first list of candidates for the elections.
DK Suresh is contesting from Bangalore Rural and Geeta Shivarajkumar from Shimogga. Other candidates include, HR Algur (Raju) from Vijayapura, M Shreyas Patel from Hassan, SP Muddahanumegowda from Tumakuru, Anandswamy Gaddadevarmath from Haveri and Venkataramegowda (Star Chandru) from Mandya. In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the Congress had managed to win just one seat with DK Suresh winning from Bangalore Rural. While the BJP had won 25 seats, JD(S) won one and Sumalatha, an independent candidate, won from Mandya.
The party also announced the candidate list for Chhattisgarh, Kerala, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Sikkim, Telangana, and Tripura.
The BJP has announced a list of 195 candidates from 16 states and two union territories. The list included 34 Union ministers and two former chief ministers.