2 ex-IAS officers in BJP's 17-member manifesto panel

BJP state President B S Yeddyurappa on Tuesday announced a 17-member manifesto committee as part of the party’s preparations for the 2018 Assembly polls.

The panel has a mix of the party old timers such as former ministers S Suresh Kumar and Ramachandra Gowda and new entrants such as V Srinivas Prasad and K Jayaprakash Hegde. The committee has two retired IAS officers, M Madan Gopal and C Somashekar.

Others in the panel are Basavaraj Bommai, Shivakumar Udasi, Lakshman Savadi, C N Ashwathnarayana, G S Basavaraju, Vaman Acharya, Prabhakar Kore, Ganesh Yaji, K B Shanappa, G S Hegde and Ravindra Pai.

Yeddyurappa has already announced three other election-related panels including the booth campaign committee, conventional media campaign committee and social media campaign committee.

The composition of the booth campaign committee had recently resulted in a fresh rift between Yeddyurappa and BJP national joint organisational secretary B L Santhosh.