JD(S) supremo HD Kumaraswamy pulled off a victory in both constituencies he contested in - Channapatna and Ramanagara - by a huge margin.
In Channapatna constituency, he beat Congress leader HM Revanna and sitting MLA and BJP candidate CP Yogeshwar. Whereas in Ramanagara, from where the JD(S) State President has contested and won the last three Assembly polls, Kumaraswamy secured another victory, this time over Congress’s Iqbal Hussain.
Channapatna, a town on the Bengaluru-Mysuru highway known for its traditional wooden toys, jumped into electoral prominence this year after the JD(S) supremo decided to contest from the constituency.
In 2013, Yogeshwar defeated Anita Kumaraswamy, HD Kumaraswamy’s wife, by 6,464 votes. Yogeshwar had also previously won contesting on the BJP ticket in 2008.
Yogeshwar, a popular Vokkaliga leader in the constituency, had won in 2013 contesting for the Samajwadi Party. Since then he joined the Congress and then left it to join the BJP ahead of the 2018 Assembly elections. This led to Kumaraswamy calling Yogeshwar a ‘party hopper’ in the lead up to the polls.
In response, Yogeshwar, who has won five times from the constituency, had called Kumaraswamy a ‘migratory bird’ for constantly changing his constituency since his electoral debut in 1996, when he contested from Kanakapura for the Lok Sabha elections. The war of words between the two had built up animosity and intrigue in the run-up to the polls.
Sandwiched between them was Congress leader Revanna, who admitted that he was surprised to receive a ticket to contest from the constituency. But it is JD(S)’s HD Kumaraswamy who has pulled off a victory over the two heavyweight leaders.
Meanwhile, Ramanagara constituency has a significant Muslim population, which has historically supported the JD(S). It was widely seen that the Congress fielded Iqbal Hussain to divide Muslim votes in the area.
Of the big-ticket battles witnessed in the state, Kumaraswamy is the only one to have won both constituencies he contested from - with Siddaramaiah and Sriramulu both losing one constituency and winning one each.