The Congress has decided to initiate an inquiry into the incident in which the candidatures of two Congressmen were rejected in Karnataka due to invalid B-forms.
President of the State Congress Unit Mallikarjuna Kharge told reporters in Bengaluru on Thursday that the incident was unfortunate and the same would be probed.
The nomination papers filed by Congress candidates Syeed Saifulla and S S Mallikarjun were rejected by the returning officer at Davangere in north Karnataka as the B-forms were invalid.
It is for the first time since 1952 that the Congress will not have a candidate from the Davangere constituency.
It was a comedy of errors at Davangere. Both Mallikarjun and Saifulla filed their nominations with the hope that the party would issue the B-form in their name.
However, Mallikarjun's supporters got an indication that the B-Form will not be issued in the name of their leader, following which they went on a rampage.
At the last minute, Saifulla decided to compromise and gave up his decision to contest from Davangere.
While all this was taking place, the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee members realised that the B-forms had not yet reached and time was running out. They booked a chopper in Bengaluru and sent the B-form in it to Davangere.
When the B-form arrived, Mallikarjun was taken aback as the name of Saifulla was mentioned in it. However, Saifulla decided to undo the damage. He struck out his name and wrote Mallikarjun's name on it.
However the returning officer was not too pleased and rejected the nomination on the ground that the B-form had been tampered with, thus dashing the hopes of the Congress to field its candidate from the important Davangere constituency, which has over 2.5 lakh voters.
During the 2004 elections, Congress candidate Shamnur Shivashankarappa had won the elections from this constituency.
All Congress leaders including Prithviraj Chauvan, poll in-charge for Karnataka, seemed perturbed by the incident.
Chauvan said that they were looking into the matter and action would be taken against those responsible.
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