Karnataka Elections 2023: Siddaramaiah clinches landslide win from Varuna, is now a 9th time MLA

Senior Congress leader and former Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah on Saturday managed a landslide victory from the Varuna constituency, defeating his nearest rival by a margin of 46,006 votes and entering the state assembly for the ninth time. The 75-year-old leader got 1,19,430 votes against 73,424 polled by his BJP rival and influential Lingayat leader V Somanna. The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) candidate was in third place with 1,075 votes, according to the Election Commission’s website. Five-time MLA and outgoing state Housing Minister Somanna was moved out of his Govindaraj Nagar constituency in Bengaluru for the first time to contest the Congress strongman head-on in his home turf. In 2018, Siddaramaiah left the Varuna seat for his son S Yathindra and went on to contest from Chamundeshwari and Badami. While he lost in Chamundeshwari to JD(S) candidate G T Deve Gowda, he defeated the BJP’s B Sriramulu by a slender margin of 1,996 votes in Badami. Siddaramaiah represented the Chamundeshwari constituency in Mysuru in the Karnataka assembly five times – in 1983 as an Independent, in 1985 on a Janata Party ticket, in 1994 and 2004 for the Janata Dal, and in 2006 for the Congress by a lean margin of 257 votes. In 2008, he shifted to Varuna which is also in the Mysuru region, and registered an easy victory that he repeated in 2013. In another expected victory, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge’s son Priyank Kharge on Saturday won from the Chittapur constituency in Karnataka by a margin of 13,638 votes, logging his third consecutive victory from the seat. Priyank Kharge bagged 81,088 votes against 67,450 polled by his BJP rival Manikanta Rathod. Aam Aadmi Party candidate Jagadish S Sagar was in third place with 962 votes. The Congress has won 100 of the 224 assembly seats in Karnataka so far and is leading in 36, while the BJP has won 45 and is ahead in 19, according to the latest trends on the Election Commission website. The Janata Dal (Secular) has bagged 16 seats so far and is leading in four. Read all the Latest News, Trending News, Cricket News, Bollywood News, India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.