Kharge fighting shy of LS polls, buzz grows over Congress ticket for his brother-in-law from Gulbarga

Among the names that featured in the Congress’s first list of 39 candidates for the Lok Sabha polls, released by the All India Congress Committee (AICC) last Friday, were seven nominees from Karnataka, the home state of AICC president Mallikarjun Kharge.

The Congress did not announce any candidates for Karnataka in its second list of 43 candidates released Tuesday.

After Kharge’s name did not figure in the first list, one of the key questions making the rounds in the Congress circles is whether Kharge would contest the Lok Sabha polls from his Gulbarga constituency or not.

A nine-time MLA, Kharge, who won from the Gulbarga Lok Sabha seat in the 2009 and 2014 polls, suffered his first electoral defeat in five decades of his political career in the 2019 parliamentary elections.

In June 2020, Kharge was elected unopposed to the Rajya Sabha from Karnataka. In February 2021, the Congress appointed him the Leader of Opposition in the Upper House. He went on to get elected as the AICC president in October 2022.

Amid the buzz about his candidature in the upcoming elections, Kharge has dismissed suggestions regarding senior party leaders shying away from fighting the polls, claiming his willingness to contest if the party workers wanted it.

When asked about senior Congress leaders opting out of the poll fray, Kharge told reporters Tuesday, “It’s wrong that we are backing out. I am 83 years old, you (journalists) retire at 65… So I am 83,” adding that “if they (Congress workers) say then I will definitely fight”.

Kharge’s remarks came amid growing speculation that his brother-in-law Radhakrishna Doddamani would be given the Congress ticket from Gulbarga.

In 2019, Kharge had lost to the BJP’s Umesh Jadhav, a former Congress legislator who