In a dramatic development, BJP leader and former Minister C P Yogeeshwara on Wednesday quit his party and joined the Congress, which is now expected to field him in the November 13 Assembly bypolls from Channapatna.
He met Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and Deputy Chief Minister D K Shivakumar, who is also the State Congress chief, after resigning from the primary membership of the BJP earlier in the day.
Shivakumar inducted Yogeeshwara, who quit as an MLC on Monday, into the party at the Congress state headquarters here in the presence of Ministers Ramalinga Reddy, Krishna Byre Gowda, Cheluvarayaswamy, and Zameer Ahmed Khan, among other party leaders.
"Yogeeshwara met me and told me that his political career started with Congress and wants to continue it in Congress, under the leadership of Mallaikarjun Kharge and Rahul Gandhi. He said he has decided to join the party unconditionally. After consulting our local leaders and after taking leadership's permission, he has been given the party's membership," Shivakumar said.
Terming politics as an art of possibilities, he dismissed suggestions that the Congress was welcoming the five-time MLA to the party as it had no "efficient" nominee in Channapatna, and said: "Congress never has a dearth of candidates." Noting that in the 2023 Assembly polls the Congress got only about 16,000 votes in Channapatna, but secured about 85,000 votes in the segment in Lok Sabha polls this year, Shivakumar asked all the party workers and leaders to work unitedly, and assured people of Channapatna a "new change" with Congress government in power.
He said he was sending a proposal on candidates for by-polls to three segments to the party's central leadership, which may announce the nominees by the evening. "Whoever is given ticket will file nomination tomorrow….Yogeeshwara too has also given application to be a candidate, along with his another name (for Channapatna)… is being sent to Delhi, they will decide." Channapatna will go for by-polls along with Sandur and Shiggaon Assembly segments in the State, where the last date for filing nominations is October 25.
Channapatna bypoll is necessitated as the seat fell vacant following the election of its representative — JD(S) state President and Union Minister H D Kumaraswamy — to Lok Sabha from Mandya.
Yogeeshwara said: "I had begun my political journey in Congress under Shivakumar's leadership. I had quit Congress, joined it back, and today once again I have come back to Congress. I feel that probably the rest of my politics will be with Congress…D K Suresh (Shivakumar's brother) played a key role in bringing me back to the Congress." He said after BJP joined hands with JD(S) he realised that he had no political future there, and hence decided to join the Congress without any conditions and pressure.
Responding to criticism that he has no party loyalty, Yogeeshwara said, "as long as I'm there in a party, I'm loyal to it…ups and downs are common in politics." With BJP ceding Channapatana seat to its NDA partner JD(S), Yogeeshwara, the actor-turned-politician, had appealed to leaders of the alliance to consider giving him a ticket from the saffron party. He had also said that he had plans to contest as an independent if he didn't get the ticket.
There were plans to field Yogeeshwara on a JD(S) ticket, but he was not interested in it, sources said. "Instead, he wanted Kumaraswamy to support him as BJP candidate, which was not acceptable to the latter and his party," JD(S) sources said.
There were demands from a section of the Congress to give Channapatna ticket to Suresh, a former MP, but they are said to have decided to field Yogeeshwara considering his "popularity, clout and winnability" in the segment, which he had represented in the past.
"D K Brothers" –Shivakumar and Suresh — are hoping to regain Congress' lost ground in the Vokkaliga dominated region, which is their home turf, after the Lok Sabha poll debacle in which Suresh lost to BJP-JD(S) joint candidate and Kumaraswamy's brother-in-law Dr C N Manjunath in Bangalore Rural, under which the Channapatna Assembly seat comes.
According to JD(S) sources, Kumaraswamy did not want to cede the Channapatna seat that he had represented to Yogeeshwara or BJP.
Kumaraswamy had won the Channapatna seat in 2018 and 2023. Before that, Yogeeshwara had represented the seat from BJP and Samajwadi Party. He had also earlier won the seat as an independent and from the Congress.
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