Bengaluru, 8 March

DK Suresh (Bangalore Rural) and Kannada actor Shivarajkumar's wife Geetha Shivarajkumar (Shimoga) figure in the first list of seven candidates in Karnataka announced on Friday by the Congress for the coming Lok Sabha elections.

A three-time MP, Suresh is the brother of Karnataka Congress chief DK Shivakumar and is the sitting member from Bangalore Rural. He was the only Congress candidate to win in the 2019 general elections in the State.

The other five candidates are: H R Algur (Bijapur), Anandswamy Gaddadevarmath (Haveri), S P Muddahanumegowda (Tumkur), Venkataramane Gowda (Mandya) and Shreyas M Patel (Hassan).

The party naming Geetha Shivarajkumar for the Shivamogga seat seems to have set the stage for an interesting battle in the home district of BJP veteran BS Yediyurappa. Geetha, daughter of former Chief Minister late S Bangarappa, contested the 2014 Lok Sabha elections in Shivamogga (Shimoga) on a Janata Dal (Secular) ticket and lost to Yediyurappa. The seat is currently held by Yediyurappa's son, BY Raghavedra.

Geetha, sister of Minister for School Education Madhu Bangarappa and daughter-in- law of Kannada thespian late Rajkumar, joined the Congress in April last year ahead of Assembly elections in Karnataka.

Venkataramane Gowda, also known as Star Chandru, is a contractor by profession. The Mandya seat is represented by Sumalatha Ambareesh, an independent backed by the BJP.

The Congress had denied renomination to Muddahanumegowda in the 2019 elections to make way for Congress-JD(S) alliance candidate H D Deve Gowda who, however, lost the polls.  Muddahanumegowda officially joined the BJP in 2022 but kept a low profile. He returned to the Congress fold only last month. "Congress has named candidates in segments where there was no confusion over the nominee," a party leader said.

The BJP-JD(S) combine is yet to come out with its list of candidates. The BJP had swept the 2019 general elections, bagging 25 of the total 28 seats in the state, while an independent (Sumalatha Ambareesh) backed by the party had also emerged victorious.

The Congress and the JD(S), 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 and now appears battle-ready, determined to put up a strong show in the Lok Sabha polls.

It is also a role reversal of sorts for JD(S) which joined the BJP-led NDA in September last year and wants to prove that it's still a force to reckon with, particularly in South Karnataka.