Karnataka Congress president DK Shivakumar shows a victory sign during a campaign. ANI

Belthangady (Karnataka): Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) chief DK Shivakumar said that the BJP is now a “divided house” as “fed-up” leaders have been defecting to its party ahead of keenly watched Karnataka polls.

“No matter what BJP does, we will come to power. I have advised the party workers to bring Congress to power. Even some people from BJP are fed up with BJP. Now the BJP is a divided house,” Shivakumar told reporters.

In the past few weeks, a few BJP leaders have left the party to join Congress over the denial of tickets.

The most phenomenal exit has been of Jagadish Shettar, the former chief minister of the state and a six-time BJP MLA. Shettar was denied a ticket from the Hubbali-Dharwad Central Assembly constituency. Shettar, a prominent Lingayat leader later joined Congress and is set to contest from his home turf.

Similarly, former deputy chief minister Laxman Savadi also quit BJP to join hands with Congress and will now contest from the Athani constituency.

Yesterday, Chief Minister Basavraj Bommai’s office was accused of calling the returning officers of various districts and instructing them to deliberately find defects in the nominations filed by the Congress Party and rectify the mistakes in the filings of BJP candidates contesting the Assembly election.

Shivakumar demanded that the Election Commission should investigate the matter and summon the call details of the CMO to ascertain the truth.

Congress’s Karnataka unit chief said in a press conference, “A major conspiracy is going on to reject the applications of the Congress candidates.”

He claimed that the applications of some BJP candidates like that of in the Saundatti Yellamma constituency are defective but the CMO “directly called the officer and directed him to make changes.”

The chief added, “There is no need to elaborate how a big team is trying to reject (my) application. You all have been informed about it.”

With inputs from agencies

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