The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which has won all the Lok Sabha seats in Bengaluru city since 2004, has not only repeated the feat again, but also won the Bengaluru Rural seat for the first time ever, thereby sweeping all four Bengaluru seats.
The Congress has again failed to win any seat in the city. The last time it did so was in 1999. The Congress also lost the Bengaluru Rural seat it won thrice earlier, and the only seat it won in 2019.
This has come as a major setback for the Congress as D.K. Suresh, younger brother of Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee president D.K. Shivakumar, lost to cardiologist and former Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda’s son-in-law C.N. Manjunath, who contested on a BJP ticket. While the seat was said to be a close contest, the results show that it was not so. Dr. Manjunath won the seat with 2,69,647 votes, much higher than Mr. Suresh’s margin of victory in 2019: 2,06,870.
Bengaluru city has reposed its faith in the BJP again, after the party increased its vote share by 5.4% in the 2023 Assembly elections, even as it lost its vote share in every other region, except Old Mysore region. The Congress had pinned its hopes on two seats, Bengaluru Central and Bengaluru North, but they were eventually dashed.
Bengaluru Central
The BJP’s P.C. Mohan won for the fourth time from Bengaluru Central, albeit with a margin of 32,707 votes. The counting of votes saw the lead see-saw between Mr. Mohan and the Congress candidate Mansoor Ali Khan, but Mr. Mohan scraped through mainly because of the BJP’s lead in the Mahadevapura Assembly constituency.
In 2019, the Congress’ Rizwan Arshad gave a tough fight to Mr. Mohan, but was only successful in bringing down his victory margin from 1.37 lakh votes in 2014 to 70,998. Again this time, the Congress has only reduced the victory margin further. Mr. Khan was the only Muslim candidate in the fray in Karnataka, and his defeat means there will not a Muslim MP from the State again The last time there was a Muslim MP in the State was in 2004.
Bengaluru North
Belying concerns within the BJP too, Shobha Karandlaje won the Bengaluru North seat by 2,59.476 votes, much higher than the 1,47,518 margin in 2019 of D.V. Sadananda Gowda, whom she replaced as candidate this time. Ms. Karandlaje, who won from the Udupi-Chikkamagaluru seat twice in 2014 and 2019, faced anti-incumbency and a “go back Shobha” campaign there, forcing the high command to shift her to Bengaluru North. However, here also she faced a lukewarm response from party leaders and workers owing to her being an outsider. Prof. M. V. Rajeev Gowda of the Congress failed to make the cut.
Bengaluru South
Tejasvi Surya won the BJP stronghold of Bengaluru South again, as was predicted. However, his margin of victory reduced from 3,31,192 votes in 2019, when he made his electoral debut after the death of H.N. Ananth Kumar, who held the seat for six consecutive times from 1996, to 2,75,026 votes this time. The Congress leader Ramalinga Reddy’s daughter Sowmya Reddy, former Jayanagar MLA, who lost the seat by a very narrow margin, failed to breach the saffron fort.
