The party is doing a 'tight rope walk' as far as the selection of the candidates was concerned as in each of the constituency there were more number of popular leaders who were keen to contest in this election. However, the party is likely to relese the first list of candidates in a day or two.
The announcement of party nominees for the coming Lok Sabha elections was delayed following tug-of-war between senior party leaders in getting party's nominations to various seats including Bangalore Central, Bidar, Mangalore, Bangalore Rural, Haveri, Davanagere, Shimoga and Chitradurga.
Congress party's National General Secretary and party's Karnataka in-charge Gulam Nabi Azad, who had a two-day brain storming sessions with the party's grassroot level office bearers before shortlisting the aspirants, was struggling to finalise the candidates list as consensus was eluded for over a dozen seats.
While party's stalwart and former Railway Minister C K Jaffer Sharief was keen to contest from Bangalore Central seat, BJP turned Congress leader and former supercop H T Sangliana equally insisting to contest from the same constituency and demanding party leaders to fulfil their promises made to him before switching over to Congress from the Saffron party.
Mr Sharief, who was defeated by Mr Sangliana in the 2004 elections was reportedly reluctant to contest from Bangalore North Lok Sabha seat.
For Bangalore Rural seat, party's sitting MP, Tejaswini Gowda lobbying hard with the party higher ups to retain her nomination but her former mentor and KPCC working president D K Shivakumar is leaving no stone unturned to deny ticket to her.
The party leaders are finding it difficult to finalise party's nominee for the Bidar Lok Sabha seat as former Karnataka Chief Minister N Dharam Singh and sitting Gulbarga MP, Iqbal Ahmed Saradagi pitching equally hard to get party ticket to contest from the seat which has become general seat after delimitation process.
Mr Saradagi, two-time MP from Gulbarga has to migrate to other constituency as the seat which he was represented was changed to 'SC Reserve' category.
