Lok Sabha Election Results 2024: Congress boosts seats tally to 9 in Karnataka

The BJP yielded ground to the Congress in Karnataka as the ruling party boosted its Lok Sabha seats tally to nine on Tuesday with the results being declared for polls held to 28 segments in the stateThe BJP which sought to ride on the Modi factor won 17 seats down from 25 in 2019 Lok Sabha elections while its NDA partner JDS won two constituencies according to Election Commission officialsHaving scored a thumping victory in the Assembly elections which witnessed a triangular fight between the Congress BJP and JDS in May last year the ruling party was determined to put up a strong show but fell short of its expectations in the polls in which the party was hoping to get at least 15 seatsThe Congress had banked heavily on the five guarantee schemes it had launched in the state which it had hoped would help reap rich electoral dividends The grand old party had won a mere one seat out of the total 28 in the State in the 2019 general electionsKarnataka is the most important State for the BJP in south India as its only here that it had held power in the pastAfter the loss in the Assembly election last year BJP had strived to improve its prospects in the Lok Sabha polls leveraging the Modi factor and had set an ambitious task of repeating its 2019 Lok Sabha performance when it had swept the pollsHassan MP Prajwal Revanna who is facing allegations of sexually abusing several women and also recording them was defeated by Congress Shreyas M Patel He has already been suspended by the JDSCongress President Mallikarjun Kharges soninlaw Radhakrishna Doddamani registered a win in Gulbarga against Umesh Jadhav of the BJP which won all the three seats coming under the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike BBMP limits and Bangalore RuralDeputy Chief Minister D K Shivakumars brother and MP D K Suresh was defeated by eminent cardiologist and former PM H D Deve Gowdas soninlaw Dr C N Manjunath of BJP from Bangalore Rural Interestingly this was the only seat Congress had won in 2019Sureshs defeat is seen as a major setback for Shivakumar who was nursing Chief Ministerial ambitionsThree former Chief Ministers H D Kumaraswamy of JDS and Basavaraj Bommai and Jagadish Shettar both BJP won in their Lok Sabha segments of Mandya Haveri and Belgaum respectivelyUnion Ministers Pralhad Joshi and Shobha Karandlaje BJP posted wins in Dharwad and Bangalore North Lok Sabha segments respectively according to the Election Commission while another Union Minister Bhagwanth Khuba was defeated in Bidar by Karnataka Minister Eshwar Khandres son Sagar KhandreAlso among those who won are erstwhile Mysuru royal family scion Yaduveer Krishnadatta Chamaraja Wadiyar of BJP in Mysore party veteran B S Yediyurappas son B Y Raghavendra in Shimoga and saffron partys youth wing chief Tejasvi Surya Bangalore SouthChief Minister Siddaramaiah conceded that the Congress performance was not on the expected lines as he had expected winning somewhere between 15 and 20 seats but the calculations went wrongHowever in 2019 we had won only one seat but this time we got nine seats Our vote share this time in Karnataka is 4534 per cent BJPs vote share is 4604 per cent which means the difference is less than one per cent he addedFurther Siddaramaiah said that in 2019 the BJPs vote share was 5138 per cent and Congress share was 3188 per centIn the 2019 general elections the saffron party won 25 seats and also had managed to ensure the victory of an independent backed by it Many BJP leaders had even repeatedly claimed that the party would win all 28 seats this timeFor JDS this Lok Sabha election was considered to be crucial after it registered its worst performance in over two decades in the 2023 Assembly polls in Karnataka bagging only 19 seatsSo in what is largely being seen as an alliance of compulsion the JDS with a hope to better its prospects had forged an alliance with BJP in the backdrop of the ruling Congress alleged onslaught and attempts to weaken the party by wooing its leaders and legislatorsAccording to leaders in both parties the coordination among their workers seems to have worked in their favour as the transfer of votes happened between them in the Old Mysuru regionIt was a role reversal of sorts for former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowdaled JDS in this election compared to 2019 as the party was running a coalition government with Congress back then and had fought the election together It had then emerged victorious in one constituency HassanCongress defeat in Mysore is seen as a huge setback to Siddaramaiah as it is his home district and he had invested a lot of time and energy camping strategising and campaigningAmong those who also lost are expelled BJP leader K S Eshwarappa and film star Shivrajkumars wife Geetha Shivrajkumar of Congress in Shimoga who had contested against Yediyurappas son RaghavendraThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability 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