Congress names Satish Jarkiholi for Belgaum Lok Saba bypoll

Satish Jarkiholi, one of the five Jarkiholi brothers, is known as a strategist and is credited to have played a key role in helping former Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah win from the Badami assembly seat in Bagalkote district in 2018.

Former Karnataka minister Satish Jarkiholi has been named as the Congress candidate for the bypoll to Karnataka’s Belagavi (Belgaum) Lok Sabha seat, the party announced on Friday. Jarkiholi, who represents Yemkanmardi seat in the state assembly, will be pitted against the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Mangala Suresh Angadi, the wife of late Union minister Suresh Angadi who has represented Belagavi in Lok Sabha for four consecutive terms from 2004.

The Congress decision to name Satish for the Lok Sabha bypoll comes at a time his brother, Ramesh Jarkiholi finds himself at the centre of a raging sex scandal in Karnataka (Arijit Sen/HT Photo)

Suresh Angadi died on 23 September due to Covid-19 related complications necessitating the April 17 by-election in Belagavi, about 500 km from state capital Bengaluru.

Satish Jarkiholi, one of the five Jarkiholi brothers, is known as a strategist and is credited to have played a key role in helping former Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah win from the Badami assembly seat in Bagalkote district in 2018.

The Congress decision to name Satish for the Lok Sabha bypoll comes at a time his brother, Ramesh Jarkiholi finds himself at the centre of a raging sex scandal in Karnataka that has pushed the BJP’s BS Yediyurappa-led governement into a corner. Ramesh Jarkiholi, who had to exit from the Yediyurappa’s council of ministers because of this controversy, was disqualified in 2019 when he switched over from the Congress to the BJP but was re-elected to the assembly in the December 2019 by-elections.

The Basavakalyan seat in Bidar district fell vacant after the sitting Congress legislator, B Narayan Rao, died last year. His wife, Mallamma, has already been named the Congress candidate from this seat and will face-off with Sharanu Salagar of the BJP.

Maski in Raichur fell vacant after its Congress legislator, Pratapgouda Patil defected to the BJP in 2019. Patil, one of the 17 legislators who engineered the collapse of the HD Kumaraswamy-led Janata Dal (Secular)-Congress government in 2019 by switching sides, is the BJP candidate for the bypoll.