With elections in Karnataka around the corner, several Congress workers staged a protest at the party’s Bengaluru office demanding tickets for leaders that they support. Hundreds of people barged into the Congress office on Queens Road on Monday, April 3, ahead of the party’s Central Election Committee (CEC) meeting after which the second list of candidates will likely be announced.
“There is a lot of demand for our tickets. Tomorrow is the CEC meeting and in the meeting, we will discuss and finalise it. We are getting a survey report and whosoever is the best will get the ticket,” Saleem Ahmed, working president of the Karnataka Congress, told ANI.
The protest was carried out by party workers who sought tickets for B Yogesh Babu and HM Gopikrishna. Gopikrishna, who was earlier in the BJP and was an MLA from Tarikere, recently joined the Congress amid a spate of leaders defecting to the party. Meanwhile, calls for Yogesh Babu to contest from Molakalmuru have been growing strong amid speculation that BJP leader NY Gopalakrishna may join the party. NYG, as he is popularly known, left Congress to join BJP in 2018 and recently quit the latter as well. He represented Molakalmuru constituency from 1997 to 2018.
On March 25, the Congress released its first list of 124 candidates, including former Chief Minister Siddaramaiah from Varuna and state party president DK Shivakumar from Kanakapura. Other prominent leaders including Krishna Byregowda, NA Haris, KJ George, Rizwan Arshad and Dinesh Gundu Rao were also featured in the list from their respective constituencies.
