Karnataka: KP Nanjundi joins Congress hours after resignation from BJP
Nanjundi took the primary membership of the Congress party in the presence of Deputy Chief Minister D K Shivakumar and AICC general secretary Randeep Singh Surjewala.
After the tussle in Maharashtra with Shiv Sena, the arithmetic of BJP with its ally is not going easy in Jharkhand as well. In Jharkhand, the BJP is struggling to finalise its seat with ally All Jharkhand Students Union (AJSU) for the upcoming Assembly elections.
AJSU is asking for 15 seats to contest for the elections while BJP is adamant in giving eight seats, same as 2014 elections.
In order to finalise the seat sharing and names of the candidates, Sudesh Mahto, president of AJSU was supposed to meet the BJP’s state and central leadership, including working president Amit Shah, on Thursday. The state BJP leaders, including Chief Minister Raghubar Das, went to Delhi, while Mahto remained at home in Silli.
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The BJP and AJSU has fought the elections together remaining ally in the state since the creation of Jharkhand in November 2000.
In the last election, the BJP fought on 73 seats while AJSU on eight seats, winning 37 and five seats respectively.
BJP had conceded the Giridih seat in favour of AJSU, during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. The party managed to win the seat, which hiked its confidence.
Influenced with the win, the AJSU started demanding 22 seats for the upcoming Assembly election which later came down to 15 seats.
As per the sources of IANS in AJSU, the party is also unhappy as the BJP wants two of the seats on which it has sitting MLAs.
In 2014 Assembly election, AJSU’s Kamal Kishore Bhagat had won the Lohardagga Assembly seat. He was later disqualified after being convicted in a criminal case and awarded seven years imprisonment. In the bypoll on the seat vacated by him, Sukhdeo Bhagat won as Congress candidate. Now Bhagat joined BJP and it wants to field him on the same seat.
However, BJP Vice President Deepak Prakash denies any rift between the allies. “There is no issue over seat sharing with the AJSU. Everything will be finalised by Friday evening or Saturday morning,” he told IANS.
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