Congress bags BJP bastion Ballari after 14 years
After 14-years gap, Congress party has won the prestigious Ballari Lok Sabha constituency defeating the BJP candidate J. Shantha.
Ballari: After 14-years gap, Congress party has won the prestigious Ballari Lok Sabha constituency defeating the BJP candidate J. Shantha.
In a big upset to BJP in the state, Ballari Lok Sabha constituency’s Congress candidate V.S. Ugrappa had defeated Ms Shantha on Tuesday by a massive margin of 2,41,656 votes in the crucial by-elections that are seen to test the strength of the state’s ruling Congress-JDS alliance.
Ms Shantha had secured 3,85,204 votes. The Ballari Lok Sabha seat has been won by the BJP for the last three elections since 2004 and prior to that Congress won this seat for 13 times since 1952.
The by-election have had to be held because the BJP’s MP B. Sriramulu gave up the seat after he won the Assembly election from Molkalmuru in Chitrad-urga district.
Valmiki community strongman Sriramulu has much at stake in Ballari, which is reser-ved for the Scheduled Tribe communities. For the by-election, the BJP fielded Mr Sriramulu’s sister Shantha, who is a former MP, and she was up against Congress party member of the legislative council Mr Ugrappa, who was backed by the JD(S). The names of these two candidates appeared on the electronic voting machi-nes, but they have been proxies for the battles fought by other leaders.
Mr Sreeramulu, on the one hand, has battled the Congress leader and district in charge minister D.K. Shivakumar — who has been given charge of winning the seat — and on the other, mining baron G. Janardhan Reddy has fought an ugly battle with his bete noire, former chief minister Siddaramaiah.
The BJP banked on its local leaders to do the job and pointed to the fact that Mr Ugrappa is an outsider to the district. The Congress-JD(S) alli-ance pulled out all stops and one-time bitter riv-als Siddaramaiah and hi-s mentor, the former pri-me minister and JDS su-premo H.D. Deve Gowda, united to try and prove that a broad coalition could defeat the BJP ahead of the 2019 elections. The Congress had won six of the eight Assembly seats in the LS constituency.