The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) took an unexpected decision to nominate additional candidates for the upcoming Rajya Sabha elections in Karnataka scheduled for February 27. The JD(S) and BJP alliance partners have decided to nominate Kupendra Reddy as the NDA candidate, announced former Karnataka CM HD Kumaraswamy on Wednesday. He said that the decision to file JD(S) candidate as NDA candidate was taken to avoid wasting votes and with both parties' high commands advising the move.
Kupendra Reddy is a former Rajya Sabha member and a close aide of JD(S) leader HD Kumaraswamy.
Karnataka JD (S) leader HD Kumaraswamy said, "BJP national president and national leaders and BJP state leaders joined together and ultimately we decided to file the nomination paper as an NDA candidate. JDS-BJP coalition candidate, Kupendra Reddy we selected from both the party."
"We didn't want to waste the votes for that reason Delhi high command also BJP high command advised us to put a candidate and we decided to file the nomination papers by Kupendra Reddy," he said.
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Currently, Karnataka has four Rajya Sabha vacancies and with the current majority, Congress is expected to bag three seats while BJP is likely to win one seat.
Earlier, Congress fielded GC Chandrashekar, Syed Naseer Hussain and Ajay Maken while BJP named Narayanasa Bhandage as its candidate.