Bangalore: Former Karnataka chief minister H D Kumaraswamy will contest from the Bangalore Rural Lok Sabha constituency and his father H D Deve Gowda from his home turf in Hassan, the Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) announced on Friday.
Releasing the party's first list of 16 candidates selected to contest in the state, Deve Gowda told reporters that candidates from the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) and the Communist Party of India (CPI) would be in the fray from Mangalore and Udupi seats.
"Friday being the Kannadiga New Year day (Ugadi), it is an auspicious occasion to announce the first list of our candidates. The second list for the remaining 10 seats will be released in four-five days," he said.
Karnataka, which has 28 Lok Sabha seats, goes to polls April 23 and 30. Voting will take place in 17 constituencies in the first phase and for 11 seats in the second.
As part of the Third Front, the JD-S has agreed to spare one constituency each in the state to the Left parties. B Madhava of CPI-M will contest from Mangalore while Radha Sundaresh will be the candidate from Udupi in coastal Karnataka.
Kumaraswamy, the third son of Deve Gowda, is a member from the Ramanagara assembly constituency, which has become a part of the Bangalore Rural parliamentary constituency after delimitation.
This is the third time Kumaraswamy, JD-S state unit president, is contesting in parliamentary elections. He contested for the first time from Kanakapura in 1996 and won but lost in 1998.
During Kumaraswamy's first term in the lower house, Deve Gowda was the Prime Minister (June 1996 to April 1997).
Post-delimitation, the Kanakapura constituency, from where Congress candidate Tejaswani Ramesh defeated Deve Gowda in 2004, has been renamed Bangalore Rural.
The Bangalore Rural constituency, consisting of eight assembly segments, is a stronghold of the dominant Vokkaliga community to which the Gowda family belongs.
The party has nominated B Z Zameer Ahmed Khan from Bangalore Central, Radhakrishna from Bangalore South and Surendra Babu from Bangalore North.
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has announced candidates for 24 of the 28 seats, is yet to name candidates for the three Bangalore city and Bangalore Rural seats.
Other prominent candidates are N. Cheluverayaswamy (Mandya), S. Shivanna (Chamarajanagar), Subash Nelgi (Bidar), Iqbal Ansari (Koppal), H. Naik (Gulbarga), Ratnakar Babu (Chitradurga), Manohar (Chikballapur), V.T. Hegde (Uttara Kannada) and Chandran (Kolar).
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