The Congress party, which is all set to ride back to power in the State, appears to have recovered lost electoral ground in Old Mysore region.
Having been subdued in many parts of the Vokkaliga-dominated southern Karnataka by its traditional rival JD (S) during the 2018 Assembly elections, the Congress has scripted its revival in the region by winning as many as 37 out of the 59 segments spread across 9 districts of the region.
The party’s stalwarts including former Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) president D.K. Shivakumar and former KPCC president G. Parameshwara have all notched stellar victories from their respective constituencies of Varuna, Kanakapura and Koratagere that fall in the region.
The results of the elections have delivered a blow not only to the JD (S), whose relevance in State politics is, to a large extent, tied to its electoral performance in the region, but also poured cold water on the aspirations of the BJP that was looking forward to making inroads in Old Mysore region.
The JD(S) tally came down from 29 in 2018 to just 14 in the 2023 polls while the BJP slipped from nine seats to a mere six even though the BJP leaders including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah made multiple visits to the region in the run-up to the elections.
Apart from a rout suffered by V. Somanna, the Housing Minister in the outgoing BJP government, who lost from both Varuna against Mr. Siddaramaiah and Chamarajanagar against former Minister and Congress candidate C. Puttarangashetty, two more Ministers, who had defected to the BJP in 2019 - K. Sudhakar and K.C. Narayana Gowda – lost the elections from Chickballapur and K.R. Pet respectively.
The Congress party’s gains in the region appear to have come at the cost of both JD(S) and BJP. While the JD(S) has lost most of the seats in held in Mandya, barring K.R. Pet, to the Congress, the BJP has suffered setbacks in Mysuru and Tumakuru districts.
The saffron party has, however, managed to increase its tally by one seat in Hassan district, another Vokkaliga-stronghold, by winning Belur and Sakleshpur while ceding Hassan to JD(S).
The victory of former Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy from Channapatna should come as a saving grace though his son Nikhil Kumaraswamy had to face defeat in neighbouring Ramanagaram segment from where his mother Anitha Kumaraswamy had won in the last elections
