The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Core Committee that met on Saturday decided to recommend the name of B.Y. Vijayendra, son of the former Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa, for the Legislative Council polls and Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman for the Rajya Sabha election, among others.
If this goes through, it will be the debut of Mr. Vijayendra, BJP State vice-president, as a legislator which is expected to pave the way for his induction into the Cabinet.
Elections to seven seats of the Legislative Council will be held on June 3 and elections to three seats of the Rajya Sabha from the State will be held on June 10, to be elected from the Assembly. The BJP can comfortably win four Council and two Rajya Sabha seats.
Call left to high command
Arun Singh, in charge of party affairs in the State, who was part of the meeting, said a panel of names would be recommended to the party high command from the State unit.
“The Parliamentary Board of the party will take the final call and announce the final list of candidates,” he said.
It can be recalled that the party high command had sprung a complete surprise in 2020 when it rejected all the names recommended by the core committee of the State unit for the Rajya Sabha polls and nominated BJP workers Eeranna Kadadi and Ashok Gasti, who had figured nowhere in the list of probables. This was a major embarrassment for the then Chief Minister, Mr. Yediyurappa.
BSY’s push
This time around, Mr. Yediyurappa reportedly pushed strongly for his son’s candidature for the Council, as he is also lobbying hard for Mr. Vijayendra to be inducted into the Cabinet.
Other names considered for Council candidature include general secretaries of the State unit of the party Mahesh Tenginakayi and Siddaraju, the former Deputy Chief Minister Laxman Savadi, president of the Mahila Morcha of the party State unit Geeta Vivekananda, Dalit leader Chalavadi Narayanaswamy, president of the disciplinary committee of the State unit Lingaraj Patil, and the former MLA N.L. Narendra Babu.
For the Rajya Sabha, apart from a re-election for Ms. Sitharaman, the core committee has recommended the names of K.C. Ramamurthy, who switched from the Congress and is one of the retiring members, vice-president of the State unit Nirmal Kumar Surana, who is credited with the party’s victory in Puducherry, and hotelier Prakash Shetty.
