Six time MLA and former Chief Minister, Jagadish Shettar, who shifted from the BJP to Congress at the peak of the election campaign, lost the Hubballi Dharwad Central seat by a massive margin. To add insult to injury, he lost to his protege and former colleague, BJP’s Mahesh Tenginkai by more than 30,000 votes. While Tenginkai received 84658 votes, Shettar got only 50447. The loss puts a big question to the future of the 67 year old Lingayat leader who spent 29 years in the BJP starting as a Rashtriya Swayam Sangh pracharak.
After being denied a ticket, Shettar, a prominent leader of the BJP in Karnataka and a representative of the Lingayat community in the Hubballi-Dharwad region, left the party. He was later offered a ticket by the Congress party, which he accepted.
Shettar was victorious in the 2008, 2013, and 2018 elections from the Hubballi-Dharwad Central constituency as a BJP candidate, following the 2008 delimitation. However, his decision to switch to the Congress party did not yield positive results for the former chief minister.
Voting in Karnataka was held on Wednesday May 10, while the counting took place on Saturday, May 13. Counting of votes began at 8.00 am on Saturday across 36 centres in the state, with 2,615 candidates contesting in the elections. A clearer understanding of the results is anticipated to emerge within a few hours. To form the government in Karnataka, 113 seats are required, which is the magic number. The state witnessed a voter turnout of 73.30% during Wednesday’s polling.