Bengaluru, 4 May

Ruling Congress candidate Samarth Mallikarjun on Monday won the Davanagere South assembly seat, for which bypolls were held on 9 April, by a margin of 5,708 votes, the Election Commission said. He was initially trailing.

In Bagalkot, the other constituency where bypolls were held, Congress candidate Umesh Meti has already registered a victory, defeating BJP's Veerabhadrayya Charantimath -- a former MLA -- by a margin of 22,332 votes.

The polls were necessitated by the deaths of senior Congress MLAs HY Meti (Bagalkot) and Shamanur Shivashankarappa (Davanagere South).

Samarth Mallikarjun, who is Shivashankarappa's grandson, secured 69,578 votes, while BJP's Srinivasa T Dasakariyappa, a fresh face, secured 63,870 votes.

In the 2023 Assembly elections, HY Meti defeated BJP's Charantimath by a margin of 5,878 votes in Bagalkot, while Shivashankarappa defeated BJP's BG Ajay Kumar by 27,888 votes in Davanagere South.