A day-long verification and recount of postal ballots in Karnataka's Sringeri Assembly constituency—conducted on the High Court’s directions, concluded past midnight on Saturday, May 2, reducing Congress MLA TD Raje Gowda’s postal ballot tally by 255 votes. The Returning Officer (RO) submitted a sealed report on the revised figures to the Election Commission, but no formal declaration of a winner has been made.
The recount was ordered by the Karnataka High Court in April 2026 after BJP candidate DN Jeevaraj challenged the 2023 Assembly election results, where Raje Gowda had won by a narrow margin of 201 votes. In the 2023 count, Jeevaraj had secured 692 postal votes and Raje Gowda 569. After Saturday’s recount, the RO said Jeevaraj’s tally dropped slightly to 690, while Raje Gowda’s figure plunged to 314.
With the revised postal ballot numbers, officials said Jeevaraj now leads Raje Gowda by 52 votes. However, the RO said that he had only submitted the recount report as mandated by the High Court and had not issued any certificate declaring a winner.
Speaking to the media, Jeevaraj said he “expected” to be declared elected. “I have secured more votes now. I don’t know what the officers will do. We will wait,” he said.
The Congress camp alleged serious irregularities, including tampering of sealed ballot boxes. Raje Gowda claimed that many ballots originally counted as valid in 2023 and polled in his favour now showed “extra marks and lines,” leading to their invalidation.
“There are markings on the ballots that were polled for me. During the 2023 counting, they were deemed valid in the presence of all counting agents. Now, they have been termed invalid, bringing down my numbers,” he said.
He also alleged that several boxes in the strong room “were not locked properly,” an issue he said he raised on Saturday morning. He announced that he would seek an investigation into the alleged tampering.
Sudhir Kumar Muroli, the Congress candidate’s counting agent, said that only the bundles of votes polled for Raje Gowda were invalidated. “All those were valid votes in the original counting. Now multiple entries can be seen on the ballots,” he said. Calling it an “exceptional case,” he filed a police complaint naming former Returning Officer Vedamurthy, former Deputy Commissioner KN Ramesh and BJP candidate Jeevaraj, alleging criminal manipulation of the 255 ballots.
The High Court’s April order had directed the reverification of 279 rejected postal ballots from the 2023 election. In the original tally, Raje Gowda had secured 59,171 votes while Jeevaraj got 58,970 votes.
