New Delhi: Ahead of the Karnataka Assembly polls, Congress on Sunday appointed BN Chandrappa as the working president of the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee, with immediate effect. Currently, the Karnataka unit is headed by D K Shivakumar.
The appointment of Chandrappa comes after Karnataka Congress working president R Dhruvanarayana passed away last month.
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge has appointed Chandrappa working president in the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee, a party statement said.
Earlier on Thursday, Karnataka Congress announced the second list of 42 candidates for the state's assembly election set to take place on May 10. In the second list of Congress, 41 candidates are from the party and one seat is marked for the regional outfit Sarvodaya Karnataka Party. The Congress has marked the Melukote assembly constituency for Darshan Puttannaiah of the Sarvodaya Karnataka Party.
The party had announced candidates on 124 seats earlier.
In the first list, Congress announced that state party president DK Shivakumar will be contesting from the Kanakapura constituency. Priyank Kharge will be contesting from Chitapur (SC) constituency.
Karnataka, which has 224 seats in the Assembly currently has 119 MLAs of the ruling BJP, while Congress has 75 and its ally JD(S) has 28 seats.
In Karnataka, the polling would take place in a single phase on May 10 and the counting of votes will be done on May 13.
The BJP government, being led by Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai is also putting in efforts to return to power and stressing the Kannadigas issue, reservation to the Lingayat and Vokkaliga communities by scrapping a religion-based reservation for the Muslim community, a decision which the state government took recently.