For a third straight time, Congress MLA NA Haris won from the Shantinagar constituency in Bengaluru with 60,009 votes.
The other contenders for the seat were K Vasudevamurthy (BJP), NR Sridhar Reddy (JD(S), and Renuka Vishwanathan (AAP), who got 41,804 and 13,569 and 2,658 votes repsectively.
Haris emerged victorious despite being in the eye of controversy following the arrest of his son Mohammed Haris Nalapad in an assault case.
When the Congress announced its first list of candidates in April, it did not announce the name of the Shantinagar candidate in an attempt to avoid controversy.
Harris is said to have threatened to quit following this, but senior leaders in the party's state unit are said to have told him to wait for a few days before his name was announced.
Later in the same month, Haris’ candidature was formally announced in the revised list.
“Internal surveys commissioned after the assault still showed favourable results for Haris. He is popular and his constituents like him. Before pointing fingers at us, the Bharatiya Janata Party should look at their candidates. Their chief ministerial candidate is a man who had gone to jail. That says a lot about the BJP. They also have nominated leaders who have criminal cases filed against them. In this case, Haris is not the one who committed a crime, his son did,” a Congress source had earlier told TNM.
In 2013, Haris defeated K Vasudeva Murthy, who was then with the JD(S) by a margin of over 20,000 votes.
In 2008, Haris won Shantinagar constituency, securing 42,423 votes. He defeated his nearest rival- the BJP’s DU Mallikarjuna, who came a distant second with 28626 votes.
Son’s assault case
In February, Haris’ son Nalapad was arrested in February for brutally assaulting Vidvat Loganathan, the son of a businessman at a cafe in Bengaluru. The brutality of the attack shocked Karnataka, and questions were raised on whether fielding Haris after the controversy will affect Congress’s chances in the state.
According to the FIR, Vidvat and his friend Praveen Venkatachalaiah had gone to Farzi Cafe on February 17 for dinner, when a fight broke out. Nalapad had asked Vidvat not to stretch his legs in the café. But Vidvat argued that he had injured his legs and therefore had to stretch them. Nalapad later called his henchman and they allegedly brutally assaulted Vidvat.
Initially, the police did not register an FIR under IPC Section 307 (attempt to murder). It was added on February 19, two days after the incident. Nalapad surrendered before police officials at the Cubbon Park police station on February 19.
Haris had distanced himself from his son's assault case saying that the case was in the judiciary and neither he nor the party had got anything to do with it.
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