Bengaluru, 13 March

Children of two former chief ministers will be in the contest for the Shivamogga Lok Sabha seat, with BJP on Wednesday fielding its sitting MP and veteran BJP leader BS Yediyurappa's son BY Raghavendra.

The Congress has named former chief minister late S Bangarappa's daughter Geetha Shivarajkumar, who is the wife of Karnataka film star Shivarajkumar and daughter-in-law of Kannada thespian late Rajkumar.

Raghavendra has been elected to Parliament from Shivamogga three times. In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls and in the 2018 by-election, he defeated Geetha's brother Madhu Bangarappa, who is now the minister in the Siddaramaiah-led Congress government. Madhu was then with JD(S). Raghavendra, in his first Lok Sabha election in 2009, had defeated S Bangarappa.

Geetha had earlier contested from the seat on the JD(S) ticket in 2014 and lost against Yediyurappa by a huge margin. She had come third in that election behind Congress candidate Manjunath Bhandary.