Former Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda files nomination for Rajya Sabha elections

Former Prime Minister and Janata Dal (Secular) supremo HD Deve Gowda on Tuesday filed his nomination for the Rajya Sabha elections, which are slated to be held on June 19. 

Deve Gowda was greeted with loud cheers by the JD(S) legislators and councilmen at the Vidhana Soudha on Tuesday. 

With this, he is the second veteran parliamentarian, who is set to be part of the upper house of the Indian parliament. The Congress and JD(S) in Karnataka formed an alliance to help elect Deve Gowda to the Rajya Sabha in exchange for the JD(S)’ support in the Legislative Council elections. The Congress has picked veteran parliamentarian Mallikarjun Kharge as its candidate for the Rajya Sabha polls.

Incidentally Tuesday is also  the last date for filing nominations for these RS elections. 

Following the announcement of his candidature, Deve Gowda’s son and former CM HD Kumaraswamy had said that it was Congress president Sonia Gandhi and several other national leaders, who requested his father to contest.

This would be Deve Gowda’s second stint in the Rajya Sabha, 24 years after he was elected as a member and subsequently as the prime minister between June 1996 to April 1997. 

With 68 lawmakers in the 225-member state legislative assembly, the Congress will have 24 votes to spare after casting 44 ballots to Kharge. As JD-S has 34 members, Gowda will need only 10 votes to win in the event of a contest for the fourth seat from the southern state, reported IANS.

It may be recalled in May 2019, the JD(S) patriarch had suffered his third electoral defeat in his decades-long political career as a candidate for Lok Sabha elections from Tumakuru. BJP’s GS Basavaraju, defeated Deve Gowda, a four-time MP and a tall figure in the state’s politics.

In fact, if the farmer-politician icon could have assuage his old allies BSP and CPI to refrain from contesting, he would have had a higher chance of victory, given that the BSP and CPI candidates got  a combined tally of 19,000-odd votes, while the winning margin for Basavaraj was only 13,000 votes.

Deve Gowda has previously been a MLA and an MP six times each. The loss came at the cost of him vacating his fort -- Hassan -- for his grandson Prajwal Revanna.

Even Mandya, which is a stronghold of his party, and where Deve Gowda enjoys significant popularity, was given to his other grandson Nikhil, who suffered a tremendous defeat against Sumalatha Ambareesh.