With barely a month left for the Karnataka Assembly elections, the state Congress party has got a new working president.
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge has appointed B N Chandrappa as working president of the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee, headed by D K Shivakumar. Chandrappa's appointment comes a month after Karnataka Congress working president R Dhruvanarayana passed away.
The elections to the 224-member assembly will be held on May 10 and results will be declared on May 13.
The party is leaving no stone unturned to wrest power from the BJP in Karnataka. It has so far declared 142 candidates for the polls.
However, the second list of candidates has sown discontent in the state Congress as many senior leaders openly expressed their displeasure over being denied seats.
Some have openly expressed discontentment and decided to quit the party while a few others said they would decide the future course of action after consulting with their supporters. Former MLC Raghu Achar, who was denied the Chitradurga ticket, was among the leaders who said will quit the party. Achar has said he would be joining the JD (S) and even met with JD(S) leader T A Saravana.
Meanwhile, JD (S) Leader HD Kumaraswamy said that as many as 15 leaders from the Congress party will join the latter in the coming days. He also took Achar's name while making the claims.
"Former Legislative Council member Raghu Achar from Chitradurga had already spoken and he himself said that he would join the JDS. Earlier, Congress took the MLAs to sink the JDS. Now they are coming to JD (S) from Congress," he added. The JD (S) will release the second list of candidates on Monday.
Earlier, D K Shivakumar had denied any chances of a pact with the JD (S) in the case of a hung election and said "such a situation will not arise".
