The Congress is lining up recent entrants and former loyalists of BJP veteran B.S. Yediyurappa to take the field against powerful leaders of the ruling party in the Assembly polls later this year.

At least five Yediyurappa loyalists have so far joined the Congress in search of greener pastures. The Congress has already named two of them as candidates, while at least three others are likely to be included in the list for 59 seats for which nominees are yet to be finalised.

One of the biggest catches from the Yediyurappa camp, U.B. Banakar, has been fielded from Hirekerur against agriculture minister B.C. Patil, while V.S. Patil has been named as the Congress candidate in Yellapur against labour minister Shivaram Hebbar.

B.C. Patil and Hebbar were among the 14 Congress lawmakers who had ditched the party to bring down its coalition government with the Janata Dal Secular in 2019.

Other Yediyurappa loyalists who joined the Congress recently are Ayanur Manjunath, Mohan Limbikai and H.D. Thammiah. A senior lawyer from the Lingayat community, Limbikai had been a close confidant and legal adviser of Yediyurappa.

All five leaders quit the BJP in spite of Yediyurappa’s efforts to retain them. But the anti-Yediyurappa group in the BJP has been alleging that the Lingayat strongman did not do enough to convince them to stay on as he was trying to scuttle the party’s electoral chances.

A Congress source said Manjunath could be fielded from Shimoga city against K.S. Eshwarappa, an influential backward classes leader, while Limbikai will most likely be the candidate against Arvind Bellad in Hubli-Dharwad (West). Thammiah could take on BJP national general secretary C.T. Ravi in Chikkamagalur.

“Few believed us when we said influential BJP leaders were ready to join us. Now that many of them are with the Congress, it is up to us to decide how to utilise their services and influence against their former party,” a Congress state functionary, who declined to be named, told The Telegraph on Friday.

“We have more surprises up our sleeves. But we are waiting for the BJP to announce its list (expectedly over the weekend) before taking them out,” he said.

Chief minister Basavaraj Bommai played down the defections and said the Congress didn’t even have proper candidates. “The Congress doesn’t have good candidates in 60 constituencies. (State Congress president) D.K. Shivakumar has been calling BJP and JDS leaders with offer of tickets. Their confidence of winning is completely fake since they are very scared of losing,” he told reporters on Friday.

While being former loyalists of Yediyurappa is the binding factor of Manjunath, Limbikai and Thammiah, their likely rivals in the upcoming elections have all been strident critics of Yediyurappa and his son B.Y. Vijayendra.

Eshwarappa, Bellad and Ravi were openly critical of Yediyurappa when he named Vijayendra as his successor from his traditional Shikaripura seat in Shimoga district soon after he announced his retirement from electoral politics.

Ravi had even reminded Yediyurappa that such decisions are taken by the party and not from someone’s kitchen. The comment did not go down well with Yediyurappa loyalists who urged the party leadership to discipline Ravi, a hardliner.

Banakar and Limbikai were key leaders of Yediyurappa’s breakaway Karnataka Janata Paksha (KJP) that he founded in 2012 after being forced to resign as chief minister and sidelined over a land scam linked to a multi-crore mining scandal in 2011. The party had chewed into BJP votes in the 2013 state polls and indirectly helped the Congress come to power although it won just six of the 224 seats.

A long-time loyalist of Yediyurappa and former MLA, Banakar had joined the Congress in November last year, dealing a blow to the BJP. Banakar had won from Hirekerur twice, as a BJP candidate in 1994 and as a nominee of Yediyurappa’s KJP in 2013. He had lost to the Congress’s B.C. Patil in 2018. Patil defected to the BJP in 2019.