BANGALORE: The BJP on Wednesday finalised its six candidates for the June 11 Council elections from the Assembly. The state BJP election committee which met here decided to field sitting members Vimala Gowda, D S Veeraiah, new faces like state BJP vice-president Bhanuprakash, Haveri district BJP president Somanna Bevinamarad, former political secretary to CM B J Puttaswamy and Raghunath Malkapure. The official announcement of the candidates, however, is expected tonight or tomorrow morning as it needs the approval of BJP national president Nitin Gadkari. While Puttaswamy, Bevinamarad and Veeraiah are from Yeddyurappa camp, the others are the choice of Chief Minister D V Sadananda Gowda’s camp. Interestingly, Yeddyurappa managed to get ticket for Puttaswamy who was suspended from the party for contesting the recent Rajya Sabha elections against the party nominee. According to sources, the party had revoked the suspension before finalising his candidature. This also means Yeddyurappa has returned to dictating terms in the state BJP with which he was maintaining distance of late. With its strength of 122 members, including the Speaker, independent MLA Varthur Prakash and nominated member Derick Fullinfaw, in the Assembly, the BJP would win six seats easily as each member needs to poll 19 votes. The meeting also decided to cast surplus votes to the party candidates itself. BJP in-charge of Karnataka Dharmendra Pradhan, CM D V Sadananda Gowda, former CM B S Yeddyurappa, state BJP president K S Eshwarappa, BJP national general secretary H N Ananthkumar and others were present in the meeting. Later speaking to media, Eshwarappa and Yeddyurappa claimed that the meeting unanimously selected the candidates and they would work united to ensure victory of party nominees.
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