Shimoga : With senior party leaders Kagodu Thimmappa and Primary Education Minister Kimmane Ratnakar refusing contest from Shimoga, Congress, on Thursday, decided to field Manjunath Bhandari to take on B S Yeddyurappa of BJP.

Bhandari, a businessman, is a fresher to electoral politics though he has been with Congress for a long time. He is associated with Union minister Oscar Fernandes. In Chitradurga, the party has given ticket to local leader Chandrappa as Social Welfare Minister H Anjaneya refused to contest.

Anjaneya, a close follower of Chief Minister Siddaramaiah,  resisted the move to make him the candidate, sources said. The party has fielded Prakash Hukkeri from Chikodi despite his resistance.

Hukkeri was batting for his son Ganesh Hukkeri. But the party was not ready to take any chance.

Prakash Hukkeri will be taking on sitting BJP MP Ramesh Katti, sources added. Sources said Petroleum Minister Veerappa Moily was renominated from Chikkaballapur as the party could not find alternative candidate.

Geetha Shivarajkumar, wife of actor Shivarajkumar, will take on the former Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa of the Bharatiya Janata Party and Manjunath Bhandary of the Congress in the Shimoga Lok Sabha constituency.

Difficult to retain seat

The party had withheld announcing Moily’s name as it had obtained information that Moily would find it difficult to retain the seat. The party has given ticket to senior leader Janardhana Poojary from Mangalore.

He had recently won the primary for the constituency.

Four seats pending

The party is likely to announce the name of C Narayanaswamy for Bangalore North constituency, primaries for which were completed on Thurday. The party is yet to announce candidates for four seats of Uttara Kannada, Haveri, Dharwad and Bangalore North.

For Uttara Kannada, leader B K Hariprasad, Prashant Deshpande, son of Higher Education Minister R V Deshpande, and Nevedit Alva, son of senior party leader Margret Alva, are in the race.

For Dharwad, Manjunath Kunoor, B R Patil and Vinay Kulkarni are vying for ticket.

Saleem Ahmed and I G Sanadi are vying with each other for Haveri seat.  The party had announced names of 14 candidates in the first list released recently.