The Congress-JDS alliance on Tuesday received their big Diwali bonus as the alliance crushed the BJP across the state including in their own bastion, Bellary. Byelections were held last week for three Lok Sabha and two assembly seats.
The Congress-JDS won two Lok Sabha seats including the Bellary seat and both the assembly seats in Jamkhandi and Ramanagaram. The alliance also won Mandya and Bellary by huge margins. The consolation for the BJP came from Shivamogga, which was won the BS Yeddyurappa’s son BY Raghavendra, who defeated the JDS’s S Madhubangarappa by over 50,000 votes.
In Bellary, which has been the BJP’s fiefdom because of the powerful mining baron Reddy brothers, the Congress’s VS Ugrappa defeated BJP’s J Shantha by nearly 2.5 lakh votes. Taking a dig at the Redyy brothers, former Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah tweeted, “I would like to thank the people of Ballari. The inhumanity of Janardhana Reddy has been cursed by the people of Ballari.”
His subsequent tweet read, “When @narendramodi does not answer questions of the ppl. Ppl will answer during elections. When @BJP4Karnataka forgets the mandate given by the people & get consumed by their arrogance. Ppl will make them bite the dust. This time it was Ballari mining dust.”
In Mandya, a traditional JDS stronghold, the party’s LR Shivaramegowda defeated the BJP’s DR Siddaramaiah by over three lakh votes.
As for the assembly polls, Anand Siddu Nyamagouda of the Congress trounced the BJP’s Kulkarni Shrikant Subrao by 40,000 votes. In Ramanagaram, which was vacated by Karnataka Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy, his wife Anitha Kumaraswamy won by 1,09,137 votes. She had got a walkover here even before the polling as the BJP candidate, L Chandrashekhar, left his party to join the Congress, just two days before the elections.
Today’s results will have bearing not just in Karnataka but also across India particularly in the next year’s Lok Sabha polls. Experts believe that the alliance of secular parties is the way to defeat the BJP’s communal agenda. Karnataka has just shown the way.