Former Congress general secretary BK Hariprasad is the Opposition’s candidate for the Rajya Sabha deputy chairperson’s post, elections to which will be held on Thursday. The 64-year-old from Bengaluru has risen through the ranks to become a senior leader of the party which he joined in 1972.
Belonging to the backward Idiga community, Hariprasad was general secretary of the Congress for 12 years from 2006 and was removed from the post by Congress president Rahul Gandhi in March. Hariprasad had himself offered to resign after the party’s drubbing in the panchayat elections in Odisha last year.
A three-time Rajya Sabha MP, Hariprasad represents Karnataka, and was first elected to the Rajya Sabha in 1990, then in 2004 and again in 2014.
He also headed the Seva Dal, a frontal organisation of the Congress, in 2000 before his appointment the following year as the All India Congress Committee secretary, a post he occupied until 2006.
Hariprasad unsuccessfully contested the 1999 Lok Sabha elections from Bengaluru South.