KPCC zeroes in on new candidates for Udupi assembly seat

Udupi: After the last week's exit of Pramod Madhwaraj from the Congress, the State command of the party has started scouting for a new candidate for the Udupi Assembly seat. R Dhruvanarayan, working president of the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee, rushed to Udupi to quickly fix the damage caused by the exit of Madhwaraj. He did not have to look any further than the old guard of the Udupi Congress -- UR Sabhapathi and Ashok Kumar Kodavoor, the indefatigable president of the Udupi block Congress.

As luck would have it, Sabhapathi is the last man standing for the Congress in the Udupi assembly area. He had been coerced into giving up his seat to Madhwaraj in 2018 despite being a favourite. Ashok Kumar Kodavoor, however is a 24x7 worker for Congress since 1990. It is not that Sabhapathi has been a consistent loyalist of the party. He had once joined the Karnataka Congress Party (KCP), now defunct, that was floated by former chief minister late SarekoppaBangarappa. But quickly enough, hereturned to the Congress and stayed there. Sabhapathi had won twice from the Udupi assembly constituency in 1994 (KCP) and in 1999 from the Congress but lost in 2008 against Raghupathi Bhat during the initial onslaught of the Modi wave.

Dhruvanarayan has done what was lacking here. He has motivated the local leaders to start from the grassroots. Udupi is one place where the party had lacked grassroots work due to which the BJP had swept all the seats in the district and the MP seat. Dhurvanarayan has gone back with the impression that there is a lacuna in the party cadre at the top after the exit of Madhwaraj but it was an opportunity for new leaders to emerge and in this case, both Kodavoor and Sabhapathi become the contenders on equal terms. But how well Sabhapathi will try to regain his foothold in the party machinery is thepoint.