Three from Deve Gowda family in fray for second consecutive Lok Sabha polls in Karnataka

While Prajwal Revanna will look for his second win from Hassan, H D Kumaraswamy is contesting from Mandya – five years after his son lost from the segment. The third member of the Deve Gowda family contesting the polls is Bangalore Rural BJP candidate Dr C N Manjunath, son-in-law of Deve Gowda.

In a battle of grandsons of prominent leaders of the region, Prajwal Revanna is up against Congress candidate Shreyas M Patel, grandson of former MP G Puttaswamy Gowda. The 31-year-old Patel had lost the 2023 Assembly polls against H D Revanna by around 4,000 votes from the Holenarasipur constituency.

H D Kumaraswamy is contesting from Mandya, considered a JD(S) bastion despite a slew of unpleasant results in the region over the past few years. For instance, in the 2023 Assembly polls, the JD(S) won only one of the seven constituencies in the Vokkaliga-dominated district. The Congress has fielded Venkataramanegowda aka Star Chandru, who runs an infrastructure firm, from the constituency.

This will be the sixth Lok Sabha election for H D Kumaraswamy – who currently represents Channapatna Assembly constituency – whose first win was in the 1996 Lok Sabha polls from the erstwhile Kanakapura constituency. He has won two and lost three till date.

Coalition partners have changed in 2024 for the JD(S) as it has now joined hands with the BJP. Although the party had hoped to secure five to six seats during the initial days of the coalition, H D Kumaraswamy ultimately had to resort to a veiled attack aimed at the BJP to ensure that the JD(S) got at least three.

At Kolar, the JD(S) has fielded M Mallesh Babu, who had earlier contested from the Bangarpet constituency in the 2023 Karnataka Legislative Assembly elections and lost. In the Congress, the seat was the subject of a huge drama. Though two opposing camps were adamant that the candidate backed by them be fielded, the Congress leadership sprang a surprise and nominated K V Gowtham, the president of the Bengaluru District Congress Committee, as party candidate.

Veteran Deve Gowda and his grandchildren Prajwal Revanna and Nikhil Kumaraswamy were Janata Dal (Secular) candidates in 2019, when the regional party had allied with the Congress to take on the BJP. That year, Deve Gowda vacated his Hassan constituency – which he had represented for five terms – and contested from Tumkur constituency. The former PM lost narrowly to the BJP’s G S Basavaraj by 13,339 votes.

At Hassan, Prajwal Revanna – grandson of Deve Gowda through his MLA son H D Revanna – provided the only win in the nine constituencies the JD(S) contested from. At Mandya, Nikhil Kumaraswamy – son of JD(S) state president and former chief minister H D Kumaraswamy – tasted defeat due to a sympathy wave favouring Independent candidate Sumalatha.

In the Assembly elections held in 2023, three members of the Deve Gowda family had contested the polls – H D Kumaraswamy from Channapatna, H D Revanna from Holenarasipur, and Nikhil Kumaraswamy from Ramanagar. In 2018, both H D Kumaraswamy and H D Revanna won the Assembly polls. H D Kumaraswamy, who had won two seats – Ramanagar and Channapatna – vacated his Ramanagar seat, which was subsequently represented by his wife Anita Kumaraswamy.