Bengaluru: BJP does a U-turn, decides to put up candidate in Mandya

Bengaluru: The state BJP has revised its election strategy with regard to the all important Mandya Lok Sabha seat and has decided to field a party candidate following the advice of the central leadership. The candidate will be Dr Siddaramaiah, retired commercial tax officer, who had joined the BJP in 2018 and contested as its candidate in the Mandya Lok Sabha by-election last year.

The central election committee of the party headed by  BJP National President Amit Shah is in favour of fielding  a candidate in Mandya, where a high voltage battle is already on place between Independent candidate, Sumalatha Ambareesh and JD(S) candidate Nikhil Kumaraswamy.

Earlier, there were reports that the state BJP had decided not to field a candidate and indirectly back Sumalatha so that she could win comfortably.

The state leadership felt that if they put up a candidate, it would lead to a triangular fight which would only serve to help JD(S) candidate Nikhil Kumaraswamy.

The state leadership had even sent a message to its party cadre in Mandya to take a neutral stand in the election. But the RSS think tank felt that by not fielding a party candidate, they would be sending a wrong message to the party cadre. Moreover in the 2018 Lok Sabha by-election, party candidate, Dr Siddaramaiah had secured as high as 2.44 lakh votes against the victorious

JD(S) candidate L.R. Shivaramgowda. In fact the BJP had bagged 27.38 per cent of the votes in the Mandya byelection, much higher than the 7.29 percent vote share in the constituency in the 2014 Lok Sabha election. The nearly 20 percent increase in vote share left the BJP and RSS cadre highly impressed and they felt it was the beginning of a resurgence of the party in the Vokkaliga heartland. This was the reason why the central leadership suggested to state leaders to field a candidate in Mandya.

Confirming that the party will field a candidate in Mandya, BJP senior leader K.S.Eshwarappa said "our central leadership has instructed us to field candidates in all Lok Sabha seats including Mandya. There is no question of giving support to Independent candidate Sumalatha Ambareesh.

Being a national party, our aim is to win the elections and we will field a strong candidate in Mandya", he told reporters here on Wednesday.

"We will win 20 to 25 seats and reduce the Congress-JD(S) alliance to a single digit. We do not have to toil to defeat Congress and JD(S) candidates, leaders of both parties and workers too are eagerly waiting to defeat each other's candidates. The infighting in the coalition is more than evident as the leaders have openly spoken about backstabbing each other", Mr Eshwarappa added.