Bengaluru, 5 March

Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar on Tuesday said a meeting of the Congress party's central election committee would be held on 7 March in New Delhi, where the first list of candidates for the Lok Sabha election in Karnataka would be finalised.

He and Chief Minister Siddaramaiah had a meeting with the Congress general secretary in-charge of Karnataka, Randeep Singh Surjewala, on Monday, Shivakumar, also the state Congress chief, said. “We will have our final central election committee meeting on 7 March. I and Chief Minister Siddaramaiah are going to Delhi on 7 March where we will finalise the (first) list of candidates,” he said.

The BJP had swept the 2019 General Election, bagging 25 of the total 28 seats in the State, while an independent backed by it had also emerged victorious.

The Congress and the JD(S) headed by former Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda, which were running a coalition government back then and fought the election together, had come a cropper winning just one seat each. But the political scene has changed significantly since then; the Congress scored a thumping victory in the Assembly elections in May last year.

It's also a role reversal of sorts for JD(S) which joined the BJP-led NDA in September last year, and is currently engaged in talks with the BJP over seat-sharing arrangement for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls.