The Congress has lost a significant number of votes in its bastion of Manglauru Assembly constituency in the Lok Sabha elections with the percentage of votes of the total electorate in the Assembly constituency coming down to 37.56 from 54.07 in the 2018 Assembly elections.
In the Assembly constituency represented by Minister for Urban Development U.T. Khader, Congress candidate Mithun M. Rai secured 74,053 votes. This is down by 6,760 votes secured by Mr. Khader in 2018. The Minister had bagged 80,813 votes in the last Assembly election.
Though the votes secured by Mr. Rai is more than 66,711 votes secured by its candidate B. Janardhan Poojary in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, it is 0.5 per cent less than the 38 % of the vote share of the total electorate in the same Assembly segment that Mr. Poojary had secured.
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The Mangaluru Assembly constituency, from where Mr. Khader was re-elected for four terms, has for long remained the bastion of the Congress. During campaigning for this Lok Sabha elections, the BJP focussed on increasing its vote share in this constituency.
The efforts of the BJP seem to have paid off with the party candidate Nalin Kumar Kateel obtaining 62,661 votes, which is 1,587 votes more than 61,074 votes secured by the BJP candidate in 2018 Assembly elections.
Mr. Kateel secured 53,676 votes from this constituency in 2014 Lok Sabha election “Bringing down the gap between us and the Congress is a significant aspect of the results,” Mr. Kateel told
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The Congress activists are surprised over gains made by the BJP in the Mangaluru Assembly constituency. “This is among the aspects we will be discussing during the review of the results to be held shortly,” said K. Harish Kumar, the President of Dakshina Kannada Pradesh Congress Committee.