Bengaluru: Former Congress leader S P Muddahanumegowda, actor-turned-politician Shashi Kumar, and retired IAS officer Anil Kumar B H on Thursday joined the ruling BJP in Karnataka where elections are due in about five months. They were admitted into the party at its state headquarters here in the presence of Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai, and state BJP President Nalin Kumar Kateel.
Muddahanumegowda, a senior leader and former Member of Parliament from Tumakuru, announced his decision to quit the Congress in September. He was the only Congress' sitting MP during the 2019 Lok Sabha polls to be denied a ticket, as the party had ceded the Tumakuru seat to its then alliance partner in the state, the JD(S).
JD(S) patriarch and former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda was the joint nominee of the Congress-JD(S) alliance from Tumakuru. Angered by this decision, Muddahanumegowda had filed his papers both as a party candidate and as an independent but had finally yielded to persuasion by the party leadership. Muddahanumegowda has already expressed his intention to contest the Assembly polls from Kunigal seat.