Denied bypoll ticket, Karnataka BJP leader joins Cong

In a dramatic development, Bharatiya Janata Party 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.

IMAGE: C P Yogeeshwara with Karnataka BJP chief B Y Vijayendra, on November 15, 2023. Photograph: Kind courtesy @CPYogeeshwara/X

Yogeeshwara, who had quit as an MLC on Monday, 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 into the party at the Congress state headquarters in Bengaluru in the presence of ministers Ramalinga Reddy, Krishna Byre Gowda, Cheluvarayaswamy, and Zameer Ahmed Khan, among other party leaders.

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 -- Janata Dal-Secular state president and now Union minister H D Kumaraswamy -- to Lok Sabha from Mandya.

With the BJP ceding Channapatana seat to its National Democratic Alliance 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 doesn'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 Shivakumar's brother and former MP D K Suresh, 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 earlier also represented the seat both as an independent and from the Congress.