On Saturday, The Congress party expelled two rebel party members for contesting against candidates it fielded jointly with ruling coalition partner Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) in two Karnataka Lok Sabha constituencies. "Rebel candidates Amrith Shenoy and Shanul Haq have been expelled from the party for contesting against official candidates in Udupi-Chickmagalur and Bidar parliamentary seats," Congress state General Secretary Shafi Hajulla said in a statement here.

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Amrit, a popular leader from Udupi, is in the fray for the Udupi-Chickmagalur seat as an Independent against JD-S candidate Pramod Madhwaraj. He decided to contest after the Congress opted to hand over the Udupi-Chikkamagaluru constituency over to the JD(S) in spite of the latter's limited presence in the region. The JD(S) could not finalize a candidate from its party and eventually turned to Congress leader Pramod Madhwaraj. 

Meanwhile, Shanul is contesting from Bidar as a Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) candidate, where party's state Working President Eshwar Khandre is the official nominee. Polling for Udupi-Chikmagalur constituency is on April 18 in the first phase and in Bidar in the second phase on April 23. Vote counts in both the seats are on May 23. Under the pre-poll seat-sharing arrangement, Congress is contesting from 21 of the 28 Lok Sabha seats in the state and JD-S in the remaining 7 seats.

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