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| BJP loses lone seat in Cauvery region |
| BS Reporter / Mysore May 18, 2009, 00:37 IST |
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Proving his firm command in this part of the State, former deputy chief minister Siddaramaiah has dealt a blow to the BJP and Janata Dal(S) in the Mysore and Chamarajanagar Parliamentary constituencies, respectively, by seeing to the victory of his candidates.
Engaging himself actively in the campaign after lying low in the last by-election to the state Assembly, disenchanted over non-recognition by the High Command, this time Siddaramaiah has seen to the victory of former minister H Viswanath in Mysore and sitting MLA R Dhruvanarayan in Chamarajanagar (SC) constituencies.
The victory of Congress in Chamarajanagar has also come as a morale booster for former Union minister V Sreenivasa Prasad, who represented this constituency for a long time in the Lok Sabha. Prasad, along with Siddaramaiah, had opposed the candidature of his close relative M Shivanna, a JD (S) MP who had rescued the Manmohan Singh government at the crucial no-confidence motion last year. At one stage, Shivanna had defied Prasad, his mentor.
For Krishnamurthy, it is a close miss again. He had lost by a solitary vote in the last Assembly election and this time has missed the Lok Sabha bus by a narrow 4,002 votes.
Krishnamurthy may set his eyes on the Assembly again, as a by-election is necessitated.
While its rival Siddaramaiah has shown his mettle again, JD(S) has exhibited its firm command again in the Vokkaliga dominated Mandya and Hassan districts in this Cauvery region. In fact, two of its three seats in Karnataka have come from this area, the other seat going to former chief minister H D Kumaraswamy in Bangalore rural. While former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda has romped home for the fifth time by a record margin of 2.91 lakh votes from Hassan, though shattered of his hopes on the Third Front, his party has wrested the Mandya seat from the Congress, N Cheluvarayaswamy singing the political swansong for the tinsel world hero, Ambareesh, by 23,437 votes.
Though Congress has failed to reach its expectations across the state by winning only six of the 28 seats, one of its noteworthy performances is in Mysore, where it has wrested the seat from the BJP.
Coming from behind, Viswanath, who was trailing at half-way, clinched the seat from BJP by 7,691 votes, denying C H Vijayashankar scoring a hat-trick. Both belong to the Kuruba community. Surprisingly, Vijayashankar has lost in his own home turf, Hunsur Assembly segment, where JD(S) candidate B A Jivijaya, hailing from Kodagu, tops followed by the Congress.
JD(S) hopes in fielding a Vokkaliga in Mysore has failed to benefit. Jivijaya was placed third in his own Vijrajpet and Madikeri Assembly constituencies, BJP maintaining its domination there.
Overall, the Cauvery region has shown a caste-oriented choice, two seats going in favour of the upper class of Vokkaligas, and two others to the lower class, one to the Kuruba and the other SC reserved. The BJP has lost the lone seat it held here, Congress and JD(S) sharing two each.
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