The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Industrialist may be fielded

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Mar 15, 2006

Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Industrialist may be fielded

A. Jayaram and S. Rajendran

Run-up to Rajya Sabha elections reaches `business round'

Bangalore: The run-up to the Rajya Sabha elections from the Legislative Assembly has now reached the "business round" with the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Janata Dal (Secular) and the Congress scouting for the fourth candidate. The candidate will preferably be a leading industrialist with the capacity to garner the votes of independents, and MLAs belonging to smaller parties.

Similar to 2002 scenario

What appears to be in the offing is similar to the 2002 scenario when industrialist Vijay Mallya contested as an independent with the tacit support of the Congress and others and confounded everyone by securing more number of votes than the official candidate of the Congress, M.V. Rajasekharan.

The three parties have selected their first candidates. The BJP candidate, K.B. Shanappa, filed his nomination papers on Monday. The Congress has more or less selected Deputy Chairman of the Rajya Sabha K. Rahman Khan and the JD(S) the former Union Minister M. Rajasekhara Murthy.

Though the Leader of the Opposition N. Dharam Singh said on Monday that the party will not field a second candidate, party sources say the leadership is not inclined to forfeit the seat to the BJP or the JD(S).

The Congress and the BJP are likely to name their second candidates only a few hours before the deadline for the filing of nominations on Friday. The Siddaramaiah camp and the JD(S) legislators loyal to the former Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda hold the key to the success of the fourth candidate. They number about 18.

According to sources, the Congress, which is going hammer and tongs at the "communal BJP," is, however, not averse to joining hands with it to field a common candidate. The candidate being mentioned is Rajiv Chandrashekar of the BPL group. It is learnt that the Ananth Kumar group in the BJP and the S.M. Krishna camp in the Congress are working for the election of Mr. Chandrashekar. The two particular groups in the BJP and the Congress have formed one of those "friendship societies" in State politics.

A section in the JD(S) is in favour of fielding another industrialist, Sajjan Jindal, of the Jindal group.

Much drama in store

If both Mr. Chandrashekar, who is originally from Kerala, and Mr. Jindal, who is from Haryana contest, the March 28 elections promise much political drama.

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