Senior leader of the Congress Dinesh Gundu Rao secured a narrow victory this time against the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Sapthagiri Gowda in Gandhinagar constituency, the margin a mere 105 votes.
In Jayanagar, C.K. Ramamurthy of the BJP, after a dramatic turn of events, beat the Congress’ Sowmya Reddy by just 16 votes, and it is a controversy still raging.
Mr. Rao won by a fairly larger margin of 22,607 votes in 2013. Eventually, the margin came down to a little over 10,000 in 2018. According to Mr. Gowda, the eventual catching up of the anti-incumbency wave was what led to the narrow victory margin in the constituency.
“Mr. Rao is highly dependent on the votes from slums and this time, even they did not vote for him much as he had not done any work for their benefit. While I could not reach out to the people as effectively as last time (as ticket was given later), this time I was with the people for five whole years. I even worked with them during the pandemic. With an effective campaign strategy, we were able to convert votes. At the end of the day, the Congress wave was stronger and despite that, catching up so closely with them was a good thing,” Mr. Gowda explained.
When the polling results from 2008 to 2023 are compared, it becomes clear that for a city which re-elects most of its MLAs, quite a few elected representatives have had trouble in improving their victory margins.
Narrow victories with a difference of less than 1,000 votes was not seen in Bengaluru in the previous three elections.
Ms. Reddy’s father and the senior Congress leader Ramalinga Reddy previously secured his seat in B.T.M. Layout constituency, with a margin of 1,857 votes in 2008, while current Union Minister and the senior BJP leader Shobha Karandlaje won by 1,082 votes in Yeshwanthpur in the same year. After that, closer margins were not seen in the next two elections.
Coming to bigger margins, this year Yelahanka’s BJP MLA S.R. Vishwanath won by a huge margin of 63,378 votes. In the previous elections, Akhanda Srinivasamurthy, who had contested in Pulikeshinagar from the Congress, had won by a whopping 81,626 votes. However, this year, after being denied a ticket from the party, he contested on a BSP ticket and lost to the Congress candidate A.C. Srinivas by a huge margin of 62,210 votes.
However, some leaders like Ravi Subramanya in Basavanagudi, M. Krishnappa from Bangalore South, B.Z. Zameer Ahmed Khan from Chamarajpet, K.J. George from Sarvagnanagar, and S.R. Vishwanath from Yelahanka constituency have managed to consistently increase their margins since 2008 (after delimitation).
K. Gopalaiah, who contested Mahalakshmi Layout from 2013, also had a good run with victory margins.
On the other side, some popular leaders, including Mr. Reddy, Krishna Byre Gowda from the Congress, and S. Raghu and Satish Reddy M. from the BJP, are amongst the leaders who have not been able to maintain consistency in their margins.
