Chief Minister Siddaramaiah won in Badami, but lost in Chamundeshwari as votes were counted on Tuesday for the Karnataka Assembly Elections 2018.
Badami witnessed a tight contest, but Mr. Siddaramaiah eventually defeated BJP’s Sriramulu by a margin of 1696 votes.
In Chamundeshwari, he lost to Janata Dal (Secular) party’s G.T. Deve Gowda by a margin of over 36, 042 votes.
G.T. Deve Gowda emerges as giant killer
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Speaking to The Hindu , Mr. Deve Gowda said he was always confident of a victory by a large margin though pollsters had predicted a tight contest. He maintained a comfortable lead right from the first round.
He attributed this victory to the constant mass contact that he maintained in the constituency and said he was not perturbed by the scale of campaigning conducted by Mr. Siddaramaiah during the last 45 days. “People were with me irrespective of the caste affiliations and I was least concerned by the kind of campaigning by Mr. Siddaramaiah,” he added.
The constituency had been Mr. Siddaramaiah’s home turf ever since he contested an Assembly seat for the first time in 1983 till the delimitation exercise redrew its boundaries and created the Varuna constituency out of it in 2008. “He returned only to contest again and promised to develop it as a model constituency which the people did not believe,” said Mr. Deve Gowda.