JD(S) sees further decline in Vokkaliga heartland
The Hindu
It lost three seats to the Congress in the region
The Janata Dal (Secular), which registered victories in two of the six constituencies that it had contested in the Legislative Council polls, had to suffer an embarrassing defeat in Mandya, the heartland of Vokkaliga politics. In all, it lost three seats to its main political rival, the Congress, in the Vokkaliga-dominated region and also wrested one.
While the two victories for the JD(S) came from Hassan, where the party patriarch H.D. Deve Gowda’s grandson Suraj Revanna won comfortably, and Mysuru, where candidate Manje Gowda scraped through, the party failed to retain Tumakuru and Kolar. In his electoral debut, Mr. Suraj Revanna became the seventh person from Mr. Gowda’s family to register a poll victory.
With the defeats, the party’s strength in the Upper House is down to 10 from the current 12. In Mandya, the party’s chief whip N. Appaji Gowda lost by a narrow margin of 97 votes. The party will be worried about the resurgence of the Congress in Vokkaliga-dominated districts of Mandya, Tumakuru, and Kolar after community leader D.K. Shivakumar became KPCC president.