JOIN USThe Bangalore Political Action Committee (B.PAC) has decided to endorse 12 of the 63 candidates contesting the upcoming Lok Sabha elections from Bangalore North, Bangalore South and Bangalore Central constituencies.
A contribution of Rs 4 lakh will be made to each of the 12 candidates and 100 volunteers of the organisation will work to endorse them through the social media and other fora.
Various criteria like educational qualification, absence of any criminal record or cases of misuse of public office, absence of financial misconduct or conflict of interest are claimed to have been followed while selecting the candidates, according to Revathy Ashok, managing trustee and chief coordination officer, B.PAC. She was addressing a press conference here on Friday.
The 12 candidates are D V Sadananda Gowda (BJP), C Narayanaswamy (Congress), Prof Babu Matthew (AAP) and Abdul Azeem (JD-S) from Bangalore North constituency. From Bangalore Central, the candidates who will be endorsed are P C Mohan (BJP), Rizwan Arshad (Congress), V Balakrishnan (AAP) and Nandini Alva (JD-S).
From Bangalore South, H N Ananth Kumar (BJP), Nandan Nilekani (Congress), Nina P Nayak (AAP) and Ruth Manaroma (JD-S) are the candidates who will be endorsed.
B.PAC claims to be an action group to improve governance in the City and started endorsing candidates since the last State assembly elections.
None meet the criteria
When reporters asked B.PAC members why independent candidates, despite the presence of many, were not chosen to be endorsed, T V Mohandas Pai, vice president, B.PAC, said none met the criteria set out by the organisation.
When pointed out why Sadananda Gowda was being endorsed when there was a case against him in the High Court, the B.PAC members failed to give a clear answer to the question.