Rebel BJP members Decide to remain Neutral for Selecting Halady as Candidate for Kundapur Constituency
Kundapur: Upset over the announcement of BJP ticket to Halady Srinivas Shetty after strong opposition by the party workers, rebel members have decided to remain neutral in assembly elections.
Kishore Kumar who contested in the last assembly elections from the BJP speaking to Mangalorean.com said, “The Party announced Halady Srinivas Shetty as the official candidate of BJP from the Kundapur Assembly constituency. As party workers, we should accept this but our personal decision is different which cannot be announced now. A man who worked against the party’s interest and tried to break it in the last five years has been given the ticket to contest the elections. In the last 5 years, we have strengthened the BJP in Kundapur. The Party High command has announced the candidate without taking in to account the party workers opinion. The party cannot force us to accept its candidate, accepting and not accepting the party’s candidate is our right”.
Kishore Kumar further said, “Contesting as a Rebel candidate, campaigning against Halady or remaining neutral will be decided only after holding a meeting with like-minded people. Only after the meeting, our decision will be announced. A four-time MLA from Kundapur Constituency, Srinivas Shetty had contested and won as a BJP candidate in three previous elections. He then decided to break away from the party in 2013 and contested as an independent candidate in the Assembly elections and won”.
When he contested as an independent candidate in 2013, he won from Kundapur with a whopping margin of over 40,000 votes over the Congress candidate Mallyadi Shivaram Shetty. BJP candidate Kishore Kumar finished a distant third in the elections.
In November 2017, when Shetty was still to formally announce his return to the BJP, trouble broke out at the BJP’s Parivartana Yatra in Kundapur where BJP workers fought with the supporters of Halady Srinivas Shetty.
The move to bring Shetty back into the party was met with resistance from party supporters of Kishore Kumar, the BJP candidate in Kundapur in 2013. BJP workers were agitated when Yeddyurappa asked them to remain calm and asked those who were shouting slogans against Srinivas Shetty to leave the meet. Halady Srinivas Shetty later in February re-joined the party.
