JD-S won’t win a single seat in Karnataka: Shivakumar

Bengaluru: Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister D. K. Shivakumar on Wednesday said that JD-S will not win a single seat in the state during the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.

Shivakumar said that the three JD-S contestants, as NDA candidates, will lose the election.

“The Bengaluru Rural BJP candidate, C.N. Manjunath, will also be defeated,” the Deputy Chief Minister told media persons after meeting Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge at his residence in Bengaluru.

He said that Congress will win in Mandya, Hassan, Kolar and Bengaluru Rural.

“The experts who predicted BJP’s win are now hesitant with their predictions,” he said.

JD-S State President H.D. Kumaraswamy is contesting from the Mandya while Congress has fielded industrialist Venkataramane Gowda aka Star Chandru from the seat.

On meeting the Congress President, the Deputy Chief Minister said: “I have given a report to the President on how things are shaping up in the state. We have also discussed Rahul Gandhi’s Karnataka visits.”

He said that Kharge will visit Kalaburagi on April 12 to file the nomination papers. Kharge’s son-in-law Radhakrishna Doddamani is the Congress candidate from the Kalaburagi seat.

He said that the Congress candidate will not be changed in the Dharwad Lok Sabha seat. “We have great respect for Dingaleshwara Swamiji who has announced his candidature as an independent candidate. If he had made the decision earlier and approached us, it could have been different. Now, the party’s young candidate is carrying out the campaign well,” he said.

Union Minister Pralhad Joshi is the BJP candidate from the Dharwad seat.