Bengaluru, 4 May

Ruling Congress candidate Umesh Meti on Monday won the Bagalkot assembly seat, for which the bypolls were held on 9 April, by a margin of 22,332 votes, the Election Commission said.

In Davanagere South, the other constituency, where bypolls were held, and counting is underway, Congress candidate Samarth Mallikarjun is leading ahead of BJP's Srinivasa T Dasakariyappa by a margin of 5,824 votes.

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

Umesh Meti, who is the son of H Y Meti secured 98,919 votes, while BJP's Veerabhadrayya Charantimath, a former MLA and 2023 defeated candidate, secured 76,587 votes.

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