Bengaluru: C.P. Yogeeshwara of the Congress has defeated Nikhil Kumaraswamy of Janata Dal (Secular), actor and son of Union Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy, by 25,413 votes in a high decibel battle for the Channapatna assembly bypoll in Karnataka’s Vokkaliga heartland.
This is the third defeat for Nikhil, the grandson of former prime minister and JD(S) supremo H.D. Deve Gowda.
Yogeeshwara, who had defected from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to the Congress ahead of the bypolls, had not just challenged the Deve Gowda family in their stronghold, but also claimed that the dominant Vokkaliga community had taken its support away from the JD(S).
“This was an election for the identity of the JD(S) and they had pledged Deve Gowda’s grandson for it. Nikhil’s loss indicates the end for JD(S),” Yogeeshwara told reporters Saturday after he secured a lead in early trends.
The Channapatna assembly bypoll had attracted significant interest from BJP’s top brass as JD(S) is a key ally in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), and H.D. Kumaraswamy holds an important portfolio in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cabinet.
More importantly, any discord with its Karnataka ally, according to analysts, has the potential of triggering instability within the NDA, considering Deve Gowda’s equation with other allies of the BJP across the country.
H.D. Kumaraswamy had won the Channapatna seat in the 2023 assembly elections, but contested the Lok Sabha elections in May from Mandya. He won and retained his Parliament seat, necessitating the byelection.
Nikhil and Yogeeshwara were the candidates, but the prestige battle in Channapatana was being fought between H.D. Kumaraswamy and Karnataka Congress chief and Deputy Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar. The two were vying for the support of the Vokkaligas, in continuation of a three-decade rivalry between two of Karnataka’s biggest political powerhouses.
Shiggaon and Sandur were the two other assembly seats where voting for bypoll took place on 13 November. In Sandur, E. Annapoorna, Congress leader E.Tukaram’s wife, won by a margin of 9,649 votes. In Shiggaon, Congress’s Pathan Yasirahmedkhan has defeated former chief minister Basavaraj Bommai’s son, Bharath Bommai, by over 13,000 votes.
BJP’s R. Ashoka, leader of the Opposition in Karnataka assembly, told media persons that the party lost because it took longer to decide on candidates in all three constituencies, giving the Congress an edge. “In Shiggaon and Channapatna, we had not finalised candidates till the end. After elections were announced, we took another couple of days to select candidates, while Congress did this much earlier. That helped them. Had we started earlier, we could have done better.”
In the 2023 assembly elections, H.D. Kumaraswamy had won Channapatna, securing 96,592 votes or 48.83 percent of the vote share against BJP’s Yogeeshwara, who had managed 80,677 votes and 40.79 percent of the vote share, according to ECI data. Gangadhar S. of the Congress had managed only 15374 votes or 7.77 percent vote share.
Political analysts say that Yogeeshwara acted more as an Independent, using his influence in the constituency, rather than relying on the party he represents to secure the victory.
The 57-year-old had first entered the legislative assembly as an Independent in 1999 and was then elected twice on a Congress ticket in 2004 and 2008. In 2009, he lost the Lok Sabha elections and the 2009 assembly bypolls on a BJP ticket. He then managed to win the 2013 assembly elections as a candidate of the Mulayam Singh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party. In 2018, he lost the assembly elections on a BJP ticket against Kumaraswamy.
He was instrumental in securing the 17 MLAs, who had defected from the Congress-JD(S) alliance to the BJP, which then earned him a seat in the upper house of the state legislature in 2020, followed by a cabinet berth in 2021.
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