Bengaluru: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is leading in 17 of the 28 seats in Karnataka, indicating a loss of ground in the southern state, where it won an unprecedented 25 of 28 constituencies in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
The Congress, which won only one seat in 2019, is leading in nine seats, according to ECI at 4 pm Tuesday.
Janata Dal (Secular) or JD(S), BJP’s alliance partner, is leading in two of three seats it’s contesting.
“In Karnataka, we have received a setback, especially in Kalyana-Karnataka region. In the coming days, we will review the results. We were expecting 4-5 seats more but we have are losing them by thin margins,” BJP leader Basavaraj Bommai told reporters Tuesday.
Among all five southern states, the BJP has a formidable presence in Karnataka, where it has formed the government more than once. The party considers Karnataka the “gateway to the south” and after losing power in last year’s assembly elections, this loss of more ground in the Lok Sabha polls comes as a double whammy to the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led outfit.
Hit by growing dissent and the alleged tightening of control over party affairs by B.S. Yediyurappa and his family, several senior BJP leaders went against the party ahead of the LS elections, likely impacting the poll results.
In 2019, the BJP’s unprecedented victory in Karnataka lent to its national tally of 303 wins across India. According to political analysts and observers, the loss of seats in Karnataka will likely bring down its national tally since the party did not foresee any major gain in other southern states.
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Three former CMs in the fray
Prajwal Revanna, the 33-year-old grandson of former PM H.D. Deve Gowda and the BJP-JD(S) alliance candidate from Hassan, is trailing by 43,738 votes from Congress’s Shreyas M. Patel. Prajwal stands accused of sexually assaulting multiple women.
The BJP replaced more than half its sitting MPs in the state, introducing new faces and accommodating leaders who had lost in the 2023 assembly elections, as well as one former chief minister. Basavaraj Bommai, the former CM, is leading by 41,998 votes from the Haveri seat, where he replaced Shivakumar Udasi as the BJP candidate.
Former CM Jagadish Shettar, who defected to the Congress before the 2023 assembly elections to return into the BJP fold later, is leading by 1,34,100 votes from Belgaum, a border district nearly 500 km from Bengaluru.
Former CM and JD(S) state president H.D. Kumaraswamy is now leading by 2,84,620 from Mandya, the sugarcane-growing region roughly 100 km from Bengaluru. Kumaraswamy campaigned hard for the seat, which BJP-backed Independent candidate Sumalatha Amarnath (Sumalatha Ambareesh) won in 2019 against his son.
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Kith and kin
The Congress gave tickets to at least seven members of the families of sitting ministers, falling back on its practice of fielding dynasts. These are Ramalinga Reddy’s daughter Sowmya, Satish Jarkiholi’s daughter Priyanka, Shivananda Patil’s daughter Samyukta, Eshwar Khandre’s son Sagar, and Lakshmi Hebbalkar’s son Mrunal.
The BJP resorted to the same strategy as it fielded family members of sitting ministers of influential leaders.
B.Y. Raghavendra, the older son of Yediyurappa, contested from Shimoga and was leading against main opponent Geetha Shivarajkumar from the Congress by 2,43,715 votes. K.S. Eshwarappa, former BJP leader-turned-rebel, was trailing from the seat by 7,48,671 votes.
In Bangalore Rural, BJP’s C.N. Manjunath, the son-in-law of former PM H.D. Deve Gowda, was leading by 2,68,094 votes against DK Suresh, the brother of state Congress president, DK Shivakumar.
Other ministers’ family members who got tickets are S.S. Mallikarjun’s wife Prabha; D.K. Shivakumar’s brother D.K. Suresh; Congress national president Mallikarjun Kharge’s son-in-law Radhakrishna Doddamani; Geetha Shivarajkumar, the daughter of former Karnataka CM, S.Bangarappa and sister of incumbent education minister Madhu Bangarappa; and Sharath Bache Gowda’s father-in-law Venkataramane Gowda, popularly known as ‘Star Chandru’, among others.
In Bengaluru South, Tejasvi Surya, the nephew of four-time BJP MLA Ravi Subramanya, was leading by 2,61,207 votes against Sowmya Reddy of the Congress.
In Bengaluru Central, Mansoor Ali Khan of the Congress is trailing by only 6,434 votes against three-time BJP MP P.C. Mohan.
Others like Rajeev Gowda, Mansoor Ali Khan, and Raksha Ramallah are also the children of former state and union ministers and a chief minister as well.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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