Karnataka polls: BJP to announce first list of candidates today

Bengaluru: The BJP is likely to announce its first list of candidates for the Karnataka Assembly elections on Monday.

The opposition parties, Congress and JD(S) have already announced their candidates for most of the seats.

The BJP has taken time and is likely to announce tickets for 150 to 175 seats out of 224 constituencies. The state unit had already sent a list finalizing two to three candidates for each constituency to the party's Central Election Committee (CEC) in Delhi.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister and BJP National President J.P. Nadda and others had held two hours of meeting in New Delhi on Sunday evening, but, sources said that the discussion is still pending over ticket finalisation.

The party has taken note of the intense competition by the Congress and JD(S), which are considering only winnability as the criterion and have finalised most of the candidates. The BJP will take a call on implementing conditions such as not giving ticket to candidates above 75 years and only one ticket to one family.

If these are implemented, then the BJP may face rebellion in many seats which can give advantage to the opposition parties. The Congress is watching the development closely and is eager to fish BJP leaders, sources said.

The BJP top brass will take a call on these matters in a final meeting on Monday in New Delhi and announce the list. The BJP leaders have decided not to give tickets to more than 10 sitting MLAs in the first list.

Former Chief Minister and BJP Central Parliamentary Committee Member B.S. Yediyurappa has stated that the tickets will be given on winnability criterion.

Pralhad Joshi, Union Minister for Coal, Mine and Parliamentary Affairs had stated that the leaders had discussed the matter in detail and a list of a large number of candidates would be released.

Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai had said that one more round of meeting will be held on Monday before the announcement of candidates list.