Denied Ticket, BJP MLC Resigns From Karnataka Council

BJP MLC R Shankar today resigned from the legislative council a day after the ruling party ignored his request for a ticket to contest in the May 10 Assembly elections.

Shankar went to Karnataka Legislative Council chairman Basavaraj Horatti's office and tendered his hand-written resignation.

Shankar was among the 17 opposition MLAs who helped the BJP bring down the Congress-JD(S) coalition government and helped the party form a government under the leadership of B S Yediyurappa in 2019. He was later disqualified from the Karnataka Assembly in 2019, and elected to the Council.

Shankar was aspiring to contest in the upcoming Assembly election from Ranebennur but the party gave the ticket to Arun Kumar Pujar.

Speaking to reporters, he said he was among those who "gave life to the BJP government in Karnataka but those very people are being sacrificed".

"Somewhere I am hurt that I reached this stage because I favoured the BJP. I could have served the people of my taluk but that opportunity did not happen," he said.

He added that the people of his constituency were ready to support him if he contested the Assembly election again.

Repenting that he committed a mistake by not sticking to the decision of his electorate, he said he wanted to "rectify it and clear the debts of the people of Ranebennur".

"I could have been the MLC for another three years. I was not able to help my workers, get people a borewell, a house or transfer the officials. There was a compulsion to do politics while remaining in a precarious situation. Today I got the freedom. I am a free bird now," Shankar said.

Elected as the lone MLA of Karnataka Pragnyavantha Janatha Party (KPJP) from Ranebennur constituency in 2018, Shankar later joined the Congress.

However, later he withdrew his support to Congress-JD(S) coalition government led by then Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy, when a few MLAs from both parties resigned. He was then disqualified considering the fact that he was a Congress member.

Shankar later joined the BJP but was not given a ticket to contest from his constituency in the December 2019 by-election. Instead, he was made an MLC, with the party claiming that "survey reports" had not been in favour of fielding him in the by-election in his constituency.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)