BENGALURU, 23, NOV

The results of bypolls to three Assembly constituencies in Karnataka which was announced on Saturday came as a major relief to the embattled ruling Congress. The party won all the seats, with National Democratic Alliance (NDA) comprising Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Janata Dal (Secular) biting the dust by losing all including two constituencies considered their bastions.

The verdict is a big shocker to BJP and JD(S), which had made the alleged corruption and appeasement politics of Congress government its plank in the bypolls. Both parties had claimed the results would be a referendum on the 18-month-old Siddaramaiah government, embroiled in alleged scams in Karnataka Maharshi Valmiki Scheduled Tribes Development Corporation and alleged irregularities in the allotment of sites by Mysuru Urban Development Authority in which Siddaramaiah's wife BM Parvathi was a beneficiary. She has since returned the sites in question and an inquiry by Lokayukta is underway.

Congress won the high-profile constituency of Channapatna in Ramanagara district, Shiggaon in Haveri and Sandur in Ballari districts. The bypolls were a proxy battle fought by two former chief ministers HD Kumaraswamy, now Union minister, and Basavaraj Bommai, Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar, his brother former MP DK Suresh, Labour Minister Santosh Lad and Independent MLA, mining czar G Janardhan Reddy in their respective constituencies. The byelections were necessitated after Kumaraswamy, representing Channapatna, won from Mandya, Basavaraj from Shiggaon bagged Haveri and E Tukaram from Sandur was elected from Ballari in Lok Sabha elections early this year.

In the byelections, Congress wrested the Channapatna seat from JD(S) with party candidate CP Yogeeshwara trouncing Nikhil Kumaraswamy (son of Kumaraswamy) by a margin of 26,929 votes. This was the third electoral defeat of Nikhil in a row after he lost Mandya seat in 2019 Lok Sabha polls and Ramanagara constituency in 2023 Assembly polls. Basavaraj had made Shiggaon constituency his bastion since 2008 and fielded his son Bharat Bommai on a BJP ticket this time.

Bharat, who was set to make his electoral debut, lost to Congress' Yasir Ahmed Khan Pathan by 13,446 votes. In Sandur, a reserved constituency that has been a Congress stronghold since 1957 with a break in 1985 and 2004, Tukaram's wife E Annapoorna defeated BJP's Bangaru Hanumanthu. —Salar News