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NDA holds sway, but inroads by Cong
BJP grabs 17 seats in a state it swept five years ago as Cong wins nine seats, matching its 2014 Lok Sabha performance
In a closely watched Lok Sabha contest in Karnataka, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) maintained its position as the single largest party winning 17 of the state’s 28 Lok Sabha seats, but yielded ground to the Congress, which improved its tally to nine on Tuesday, up from a solitary seat five years ago.
The BJP, which sought to ride on the popularity of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and even stitched a strategic pre-poll alliance with the Janata Dal (Secular), saw its performance take a hit from the 2019 general elections, when the party had won 25 parliamentary constituencies in the southern state, considered the electoral gateway to the South for the BJP. The JD(S), BJP’s partner in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), won two constituencies.
The Congress on the other hand, buoyed by a thumping win in the assembly elections less than a year ago, was determined to put up a strong show but fell short of its expectations of winning at least 15 seats. The ruling party had banked heavily on the five guarantee schemes it had launched in Karnataka soon after forming the government last May. In 2019, the Congress had won a mere one seat out of the total 28 in the state.
“The calculations went wrong,” chief minister Siddaramaiah said, acknowledging the party’s performance was not on the expected lines. He, however, pointed that the Congress’s vote share stood very close to the BJP’s. “In 2019, we won only one seat but this time we got nine seats. Our vote share in Karnataka is 45.34% while BJP got 46.04% votes, which means the difference is less than 1% (percentage point),” the senior Congress leader added.
For Siddaramaiah’s deputy and state Congress president DK Shivakumar, Tuesday’s verdict dealt a blow to his political ambitions. Not only did his efforts to establish himself as a dominant Vokkaliga — one of the two major caste groups in Karnataka — leader in the Old Mysuru region took a hit by the poll results, his brother and three-time lawmaker DK Suresh was defeated by cardiologist Dr CN Manjunath, the son-in-law of JD(S) patriarch and former prime minister HD Deve Gowda BJP from Bangalore Rural.
BJP’s Manjunath defeated Suresh by a margin of 269,647 votes in the only constituency the Congress had won five years ago.
“I did not expect such a huge victory. The hard work of BJP workers and leaders has paid off. I dedicate this victory to the workers of the constituency,” Manjunath told reporters after the results were announced.
In Vokkaliga-dominated constituencies such as Bengaluru Rural, Tumkur, Chikkaballapur, Kolar, Mandya, and Mysuru, the BJP secured significant victories. Among the nine seats that the Congress won, only two were from south Karnataka, considered the Vokkaliga heartland. One of them being Hassan, where incumbent Prajwal Revanna, who is facing allegations of sexually abusing several women and also recording them, was defeated by Congress’s Shreyas M Patel.
The suspended JD(S) leader is currently in jail in connection with the sexual harassment cases.
Expressing his disappointment over JD(S) poll performance, party president HD Kumaraswamy said: “We made some mistakes. (Or else) we could have won another four to five seats.”
The JD(S) chief, who defeated Congress’s Venkatramane Gowda (popularly known as Star Chandru) from Mandya seat by 284,620 votes, however, acknowledged that the party had anticipated Prajwal’s potential loss.
For JD(S), the Lok Sabha elections was considered to be crucial, after it registered its worst performance in over two decades in the 2023 assembly polls, bagging only 19 seats.
The BJP, which had set an ambitious target of replicating its 2019 sweep, fell short, with several high-profile candidates, including Union minister Bhagwanth Khuba facing defeat.
Party’s state president BY Vijayendra downplayed the setback, saying the party thawed the ruling Congress’s plans in the state.
“The dream of the Congress party workers to win more than 20 seats in the state through their guarantees has been shattered today. There was a lot of discussion about guarantees. We lost in the last assembly polls,” he said.
“Apart from all this, the conscious voters of our state have fully supported Narendra Modi to become the Prime Minister once again in an election that will shape the future of the country. Therefore, he said that he would be grateful to the voters of our state,” the state BJP chief added.
The Lok Sabha elections in the state was held in two phases on April 26 and May 7.
