The first list of 124 candidates includes names of former chief minister Siddaramaiah and State party president DK Shivakumar.
Former CM Siddaramaiah will be fighting from Varuna assembly seat, while PCC chief Shivakumar will be contesting from Kanakapura.
The party has fielded former deputy chief minister G Parameshwara from the Koratagere constituency. Former ministers KH Muniappa and Priyank Kharge will contest from Devanahalli and Chitapur, respectively. Priyank is the son of Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge.
The party’s central election committee cleared the first list of candidates after a meeting in Delhi on March 17. The committee is chaired by Congress chief Kharge. Rahul Gandhi was also present at the meeting.
The Congress is the first party to release its candidates’ list for the elections in Karnataka. The schedule for the Karnataka assembly elections is yet to be announced by the Election Commission, but campaigning is already in full swing.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has already visited Karnataka six times in this year and inaugurated a slew of development projects in the state.
Assembly polls in Karnataka are slated before May when the tenure of the current assembly ends.
The Congress is seeking to wrest power from the BJP in the southern state.
The list also comes a day after the Karnataka government made changes to reservation categories in the state. To give a boost the BJP’s prospects in the upcoming assembly elections, the state cabinet on Friday decided to increase the reservation quota for the two politically powerful and dominant castes —Lingayats and Vokkaligas —by 2% each. To increase the quota, the cabinet removed the 4% reservation for Muslims and moved them under the 10% Economically Weaker Section (EWS) basket.
PM Modi will be in poll-bound Karnataka on Saturday to inaugurate a new metro line in Bengaluru.