Bengaluru: Prajwal Revanna, the 33-year-old grandson of former Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda, was trailing by 43,123 votes from the Hassan Lok Sabha seat.
Congress’s Shreyas M. Patel, who secured 6,70,599 votes cast in the constituency, was leading at 2.30 pm Tuesday.
Suspended Janata Dal (Secular) or JD(S) leader Prajwal is accused of raping multiple women and will remain in the custody of a special investigation team (SIT) probing the case till 6 June.
“Our BJP friends will get a minimum of 20 seats. Even in Bengaluru Rural, we are confident that Dr C.N. Manjunath will win,” Karnataka JD(S) President H.D. Kumaraswamy told the media Tuesday morning.
So far, the BJP is leading in 16 seats, its alliance partner JD(S) in two and the Congress in 10 seats in Karnataka.
At least three women have lodged formal complaints of rape against Prajwal and brought serious charges such as criminal intimidation, abduction, and molestation against his father, former minister H.D. Revanna, as well as his mother, Bhavani.
Prajwal was the sole JD(S) candidate to register a victory in the 2019 elections when the party allied with the Congress for the Lok Sabha polls. Deve Gowda, who sacrificed his Hassan seat for Prajwal and contested from Tumakuru, lost. Prajwal, at the time, secured 6,76,606 votes or 52.92 percent of the votes cast in the constituency, winning by a margin of 1,41,324 against BJP’s A.Manju.
However, in September last year, the Karnataka High Court disqualified Prajwal on the grounds of election malpractice and improper declaration of assets. His disqualification was stayed by the Supreme Court.
Prajwal has gained notoriety since thousands of videos of him sexually exploiting women, allegedly shot by him, surfaced days ahead of the April 26 elections in Karnataka.
He fled to Germany the same night and refused to appear before the SIT. He returned on the night of May 30 when he was taken into custody.
The Congress-led INDIA alliance used Prajwal’s notoriety to target the Deve Gowda family and its alliance partner, the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party, for endorsing a rape accused. The Congress has alleged that the BJP’s central and state leadership knew about Prajwal’s alleged rapes but kept it under wraps.
In June last year, Prajwal secured a gag order against 86 news and online platforms, restricting anyone from publishing, circulating or broadcasting any videos or material that would be defamatory to him.
In October last year, G. Devaraje Gowda, an advocate and BJP leader, wrote to the state and central leadership of the party informing them of the existence of obscene videos of Prajwal, but there was no action at the time.
By estimates, there are nearly 3,000 videos and it remains to be ascertained how many women were exploited.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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