In Karnataka, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), with its strategic ally Janata Dal (Secular) (JDS), has won 19 of the 28 Lok Sabha seats. Congress, too, put up a stiff fight and bagged the other nine seats.

The BJP has secured 17 seats in the Lok Sabha, with some of its key winners being former Karnataka Chief Ministers Basavaraj Bommai and Jagadish Shettar, who won the Haveri and Belgaum seats, respectively.

After a keen contest against INC’s Mansoor Ali Khan, BJP’s PC Mohan, who was initially trailing behind, has won the seat in Bangalore Central with a margin of 32,707 votes. BJP’s BY Raghavendra, son of former CM BS Yediyurappa, has won in Shimoga. The first-time contestant and the former Mysuru royal family’s scion, Yaduveer Krishnadatta Chamaraja Wadiyar has won the Mysore seat with a margin of over 1.3 lakh votes.

Among the key winners in the Congress camp are party President Mallikarjun Kharge’s son-in-law, Radhakrishna Doddamani, who won the Gulbarga seat. The party had just one Lok Sabha seat in the previous parliament in Karnataka. In Hassan’s, the grand old party’s Shreyas Patel defeated Deve Gowda’s grandson Prajwal Revanna by a margin of 42,649 seats, who is under arrest for alleged sex crimes.

Congress won most of its seats from the Kalyana Karnataka region.

Despite extensive campaigning in his home district of Mysore, Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah was unable to garner enough support for Congress contestant Lakshmana. In Bangalore Rural, KPCC President DK Shivakumar saw a similar loss. His brother DK Suresh lost the seat to the BJP’s CN Manjunath, the son-in-law of JDS’ founder HD Deve Gowda, by a margin of nearly 2.6 lakh votes.

Former CM and JDS candidate Kumaraswamy won from Mandya, while the party also won the Kolar reserved seat. Interestingly, several candidates like Jagadish Shettar, V Somanna, and Vishweshwar Hegde Kageri, who had lost in the 2023 Assembly elections, got themselves elected to parliament. 

Sandeep Shastri, a political analyst, said, “In terms of the results, Karnataka continues to follow the same trend they’ve demonstrated for the last three elections — a different approach towards Lok Sabha elections and Vidhan Sabha elections. This is the third time now — in 2013–14, 2018–19, and now in 2023–24.

The Congress, being the ruling party in the State, seemed to have a slight advantage, thanks to their guarantees. That has brought their seats up to a level. Despite contradictions within the state unit of the BJP, the party has been able to hold on and does not see too much seat loss in Karnataka.” 

(With inputs from BL Intern Nivasini Azagappan) 

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