Congress yet to decide on Siddaramaiah’s second seat

Differences over around 28 seats, including Kolar from where former Chief Minister Siddaramaiah wants to contest besides Varuna, are holding back from declaring candidates for the remaining 58 seats for Karnataka assembly polls though Congress leadership held another marathon meeting that ended in the wee hours of Tuesday.

With several leaders opposing giving Kolar as second seat to Siddaramaiah, the high command is finding it difficult to take a decision, sources in Congress said. The party top brass including Congress national president Mallikarjuna Kharge, senior leader Rahul Gandhi, General Secretaries K C Venugopal, Randeep Surjewala, Pradesh Congress president D K Shivakumar, Siddaramaiaah held a meeting till 3 am Tuesday.

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Even after the meeting till early in the morning Tuesday, Siddaramaiah again met Kharge and Rahul separately. However, the party top brass did not give commitment to Siddaramaiah. Later Rahul assured Siddaramaiah to inform the party high command's decision soon and asked him to return to Bengaluru, sources said.

On Wednesday, again Kharge will hold another round of meeting with Venugopal and Mukul Wasnik and finalise all the seats.

Besides Kolar, some of the seats including Pulakeshinagar, Lingasagur, Kundagol and Shidlaghatta, the leaders failed to zero in common candidates. With Siddaramaiah and Shivakumar pushing their own candidates for each seats, the top brass failed to finalise the candidates

Congress already announced candidates for 166 seats out of 224 seats.