‘Srinivas B.V. has an equal amount of support amongst the youth in Karnataka and can give a tough fight to the BJP’s candidate’.
NEW DELHI: After the successful show of the Congress in the Karnataka Assembly elections, the Congress is likely to pit its national youth wing president, Srinivas B.V., against BJP’s youth president Tejasvi Surya from the Bengaluru South constituency from Karnataka in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
Sources in the Congress indicated that they would like to put Srinivas B.V. against Tejasvi Surya from this seat as the party believes that Srinivas would be a challenging candidate to BJP’s Tejasvi Surya given that Srinivas has an equal amount of support amongst the youth in Karnataka and can give a tough fight to the BJP’s candidate.
“Srinivas is a young face and is a fit candidate to take on Tejasvi Surya. Srinivas is also the son of the soil and is from Karnataka. He also has that the same amount of energy and passion to give a tough fight to the BJP candidate and he (Srinivas B.V.) has also managed to get a good reputation amongst the youth for his selfless service during the Covid-19 pandemic when he went out of the way to help needy people and Tejasvi was caught sleeping.
The party is confident that Srinivas would be able to defeat Tejasvi, if he is allowed to contest against him,” a Congress leader from Delhi told The Sunday Guardian.
The 43-year-old Congress youth president, Srinivas B.V., comes from the Shivamoga district in Karnataka and is considered to be close to senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.
He also enjoys the confidence of Congress’s Karnataka State president and now Deputy CM designate, D.K. Shivakumar. He has been an active member of the Congress since his college days in Karnataka and was an active member of the Congress’ student wing, the NSUI. He later went on to become district, state and then national youth president of the Congress party.
Incidentally, Srinivas B.V. was appointed the Youth Congress President in July 2019, just two months after Tejasvi Surya was elected as an MP from the Bangalore South Lok Sabha Constituency. Tejasvi Surya was appointed as the national youth president of the BJP in September 2020.
Srinivas shot to fame during the Covid-19 pandemic when he started to help people in distress during the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2021, when he would instantly reply to people searching for help on the social media application, Twitter, and help arrange hospital beds and oxygen cylinders for the helpless kin of patients. Photos of him carrying oxygen cylinders for patients were also published on Twitter, which had gained immense popularity and support for the leader.
Since then, Srinivas has been seen vehemently fighting for the Congress on the streets and had, according to Congress leaders, taken the Youth Congress to its “hay days”. He also actively campaigned for the Congress in Karnataka.
However, Srinivas has not contested any elections till date while BJP’s Tejasvi Surya had won the 2019 Lok Sabha elections by defeating veteran Congress leader B.K. Hariprasad by more than three lakh votes. Tejasvi is also considered a mass youth leader from Karnataka and is believed to be active in his constituency.
Tejasvi also boasts of winning 16 out of the 28 Assembly constituencies in the Bengaluru region, from where he is the BJP’s MP. Tech city (Bangalore South Lok Sabha constituency), which Tejasvi represents, has eight Assembly constituency and out this, the BJP won five, while the Congress won on three, in the recently concluded Assembly elections in Karnataka.
This according to BJP leaders has been a “good” performance for the MP and the party, as the party has not performed as per expectations from the other regions in Karnataka.
Tejasvi also fought till the last vote was counted for the Jayanagar seat where the BJP candidate won by a wafer-thin margin of just 16 votes and this win is being credited to Tejasvi and his continued fight till the last moment, who demanded recounting as he sensed some mistake in the counting in this particular constituency.