Bengaluru, 22 Feb

Former Member of Parliament from Tumakuru SP Muddahanumegowda on Thursday returned to the Congress, ahead of the Lok Sabha polls later this year. He had quit Congress and had jumped ship to the BJP in 2022, ahead of the Assembly polls in 2023.

The senior leader was admitted into the Congress in the presence of Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, party's state unit President and Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar, Ministers G Parameshwara and K N Rajanna, and several party leaders and workers.

He is expected to be the party's candidate from Tumakuru for the Lok Sabha polls, according to Congress sources.

Addressing party workers and supporters after joining the Congress, Muddahanumegowda said though defection is a well-accepted phenomenon today for both political parties and people, he had defected to the BJP with a lot of pain, only to contest the election. His actions had hurt his followers, party workers and leaders, and he would apologise to them, he added.

Stating that he had been district Congress president and MLA from the party for 10 years and MP for five years, he said he has come back to the party that gave him a political identity, realising his mistake.

Muddahanumegowda was the only Congress sitting MP to be denied a ticket for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, as the party had ceded the Tumakuru seat to its then alliance partner in the state, the JD(S).

JD(S) patriarch and former Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda was the joint nominee of Congress-JD(S) alliance from Tumakuru then. Salar News