The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Monday announced the third list of candidates comprising 10 names for the upcoming Karnataka elections. After the exit of former Karnataka CM Jagadish Shettar from the BJP, the saffron party fielded state general secretary Mahesh Tenginakai from the Hubli-Dharwad-Central segment.
With the third list, the party has so far announced the names of 222 candidates. The names of only two seats – Manvi and Shivamogga – are left to be announced. Voting for the 224-member Karnataka Assembly will be held on May 10, and counting of votes will take place on May 13.
In the new list, the party dropped two sitting MLAs. S A Ramdas who was representing the Krishna Raja seat in Mysuru has been dropped and he has been replaced by new face Srivatsa. It has also dropped Koppal MLA Karadi Sanganna, who is likely to join the Congress or the Janata Dal (Secular), and has fielded a woman candidate, Manjula Amaresh, for the seat.
From the Scheduled Castes reserved Mahadevapura constituency in Bengaluru’s IT corridor, the party has chosen sitting MLA Aravind Limbavali’s wife Manjula Aravind Limbavalli as the candidate.
Of the 222 candidates, the BJP has dropped 19 sitting MLAs out of the 116. They are: S A Ramdas, Karadi Sanganna, Jagadish Shettar, S Angara, Sanjeev Matandoor, Raghupathy Bhat, Lalaji Mendon, Halady Srinivas, Goolihatti Shekhar, Ramappa Lamani, Anil Benake, Yadwad Shivalingappa, C M Nimbannavar, Nehru Olekar, S A Ravindranath, Linganna, Madal Virupakshappa, Sukumar Shetty and M P Kumaraswamy.
The party had released the first list of candidates with 189 names on April 12, and a day later, the second list with names of 23 candidates.