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Congress puts Madikeri seat on hold after reports of candidate being Mehul Choksi’s lawyer

The Congress had on Sunday announced its first list of 218 candidates for the upcoming Karnataka elections.

Congress puts Madikeri seat on hold after reports of candidate being Mehul Choksi’s lawyer

Two days after releasing its first list of candidates for the Karnataka Assembly elections, the Congress has reportedly put the candidature for Madikeri seat on hold. News agency ANI quoted sources as saying that the seat was put on hold after reports that the candidate, HS Chandramouli, has been a lawyer of absconding jeweller Mehul Choksi.

The Congress had on Sunday announced its first list of 218 candidates for the upcoming Karnataka elections, scheduled to be held on May 12.

Targeting the Congress party over the candidate for the Madikeri seat, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had said that the list proved yet another link of Rahul Gandhi with Mehul Choksi.

Addressing a press conference, BJP spokesperson GVL Narasimha Rao had said that Chandramouli had been rewarded for his strong links with the Congress party. He further alleged that Chandramouli had represented Choksi in court in connection with a complaint filed by one Hariprasad in Bengaluru. He said that while the police had earlier filed a criminal complaint in the same, it was later converted into a civil case.

With less than a month left for Karnataka to go to polls, both the ruling Congress and the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have entered a high-pitched battle on the ground and on social media.

Last week, the BJP had released its first list of 72 candidates following a meeting of the party's Central Election Committee. The committee had met at BJP's Headquarters in New Delhi with party President Amit Shah and committee members including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Rajnath Singh and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj present.

Karnataka polls are scheduled to be held in a single phase on May 12 and the counting of votes will be done on May 15.