Congress, Increase Their Seat Tally in Karnataka, Bjp Seats Take a Dip

Bengaluru: The ruling Congress government in Karnataka romped home winning 9 parliamentary seats which is an increase of 8 seats from the previous 2019 election where the party won a single seat out of 28. Despite an increase in its seats tally, the Congress party fell short of its expectations to win 20 seats.

On the contrary, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lost 8 seats from its previous tally and the seat tally stood at 17. In 2019, BJP won 25 seats. Later, independent MP Sumalatha Ambareesh representing Mandya's seat extended her support to BJP taking its tally to 26 seats.

The Janata Dal-Secular, having an alliance with the BJP improved its seat tally from winning a lone seat in 2019 to winning two seats in 2024. However, its last-time winner Prajwal Revanna lost Hassan Lok Sabha to Congress nominee Shreyas Patel.

After the outcome of the Lok Sabha election, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah stated that the party's vote share stood at 45.34 percent which is less than BJP's vote share. The BJP got a vote share of 46.04 in the parliamentary election and the JDS share also dropped from its previous performance.

“We got 31.88 percent vote share in 2019 while the BJP had got a vote share of 51.38 percent. Now, BJP’s vote share has come down by 5 percent after aligning with JDS in Karnataka,” said the Chief Minister.

Deputy Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar on the poll results stated “We did not get expected results in Bengaluru Lok Sabha seats and also in Kittur Karnataka. We expected 14 seats.”

In Bengaluru, BJP nominees-Shobha Karandlaje won in Bengaluru North, Bengaluru seat was won by P.C. Mohan and Bengaluru South was won by Tejasvi Surya. The Bengaluru Rural seat was won by Dr C.N. Manjunath.

The BJP nominees won in Mysuru-Kodagu (Yaduveer Krishnadatta Chamaraja Wadiyar), Bagalkot seat (Gaddi Gouder), Raghavendra won in Shivamogga seat, Govind Karjol won in Chitradurga seat, D. Sudhakar won in Chikkaballapur seat, V. Somanna won in Tumakuru seat, Ramesh Jigajinagi won in Vijayapura seat, Jagadeesh Shettar won Belagavi seat, Udupi-Chikkamagaluru seat won by Kota Srinivas poojary and Brijesh Chowta won Dakshina Kannada seat, Vishveshwar Hegde Kageri won Uttara Kannada seat and Basavaraj Bommai won Haveri seat.

State BJP president B.Y. Vijayendra said JDS-BJP combine won in 19 seats (BJP won 17 and JDS in 2 seats) and termed “It a big achievement.”

The Congress party claimed to win 20 seats but the voters of Karnataka sent a clear message that they believe in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s guarantee, said Vijayendra and stated that BJP is happy with the party’s performance.

The Congress party nominees won by Sunil Bose in Chamarajanagar, a reserved seat for Scheduled Castes, E. Tukaram won Ballari seat, Sagar Khandre won in Bidar seat, Radhakrishna Doddamani won Kalaburagi seat, Kumar Naik won Raichur seat, Shreyas Patel in Hassan seat, Prabha Mallikarjun in Davangere seat and Priyanka Jarkiholi in Chikkodi seat.

State JDS Chief and former Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy won in the Mandya seat while Mallesh Babu, JDS-BJP consensus Kolar nominee also won.