Congress wrests both seats from JDS,boost to CM

Riding on the strength of its recent ascent to power in the state coupled with a highly united effort by its leaders

Riding on the strength of its recent ascent to power in the state coupled with a highly united effort by its leaders,the Congress party in Karnataka managed to beard the Janata Dal Secular party in its own den Gowda heartland in the bypolls held for two Lok Sabha seats on August 21.

In the first major elections held after the Siddaramaiah government came to power in May this year,the Congress candidate from Mandya,film actress Ramya,has been declared the winner. The 30-year-old film actress is making her political debut in the election. In a rousing turn around in fortunes,the Bangalore Rural seat has gone to senior Congress leader D K Shivakumars brother D K Suresh who defeated the united JDS-BJP combine candidate Anitha,who is JDS leader Kumaraswamys wife.

Actress Ramya whom the Congress fielded as a compromise candidate to unify two warring factions in the region,one headed by film star and MP M H Ambareesh and the other by former external affairs minister S M Krishna defeated C S Puttaraju a grassroots JDS leader by a margin of 67,611 votes.

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It was a bitter sweet election for Ramya who lost her foster father R T Narayan,a close associate of S M Krishna,shortly after she filed a her nomination papers this month. A sympathy wave built up for her after a JDS local politician questioned her parentage and caste rooting in the Mandya district where 50 per cent of voters are from the Vokkaliga community considered loyal to the JDS party of former prime minister H D Deve Gowda.

In the May Assembly elections the JDS won five of the eight Assembly segments in Mandya while the Congress managed only one. In the Bangalore Rural constituency,the JDS,which had defeated the BJP by a margin of 1,30,275 votes in the 2009 polls,suffered a huge setback when,despite joining hands with the BJP this time,the partys candidate Anitha Kumaraswamy lost by a margin of 1.37 lakh votes. The victory of the Congress candidate,D K Suresh,is likely to open the doors of the state cabinet for his brother D K Shivakumar who was kept out in May.

Saturdays results have come as a major boost for the leadership of chief minister Siddaramaiah who introduced a slew of populist measures soon after coming to power in May and threw the entire political muscle of the party into the campaigning. The win is also expected to keep the state Congress functioning as a cohesive unit at least till parliamentary elections next year.

I am now confident that the Congress will win more than 20 seats in the Lok Sabha polls, Siddaramaiah said after the results were declared.

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