In a shocker to the BJP, Congress party snatched the Hangal Assembly constituency from the ruling party with its candidate Srinivas Mane emerging the winner with a margin of 7,373 votes.
As per the official announcement, Mr. Mane secured 87,490 votes while BJP candidate Shivaraj Sajjanar, a former MLA from Haveri, finished with 80,117 votes.
JD(S) candidate Niyaz Shaikh got 927 votes.
There were 13 candidates in the fray, including seven independents.
Mr. Mane, an MLC, secured a slender lead from first round and it increased gradually during subsequent rounds.
Hangal is in Haveri district, which is the home district of Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai who said, “I have taken the election setback very seriously , and will take the necessary corrective action.”
Women line up at a polling station in Hanmumanakoppa in Hangal Assembly constituency on October 30, 2021 during the bypoll.
Sindgi
BJP won the Sindgi bypoll Ramesh Bhusnur, former MLA, defeating his nearest Congress rival by a margin over 30,000 votes. When counting ended, Mr. Bhusnur had got 93,380 votes against 62,292 for Congress nominee Ashok Managuli. The winning margin was 31,088 votes.
This is the third victory for Ramesh Bhusnur, the only legislator to be elected three times from Sindgi.
JD(S) had held the Sindgi seat since 2017. The party candidate Naziya Angadi came a distant third garnering around 4,321 votes. She lost her deposit.
With this, the number of JD(S) seats in north Karnataka has been reduced to five.
The bypoll was necessitated by the death of JD(S) MLA M.C. Managuli in January this year. His son Ashok Managuli joined the Congress, along with his brother Shantaveer Managuli.
Though there were six candidates, the fight was between the BJP and the Congress. Between them, they got 95% of the votes. BJP got about 57% of the total 1,62,852 votes polled. Congress got around 38% of the votes.
JD(S) got 2.6% of the votes, and NOTA accounted for 1,029 votes (0.6%) with the rest 1.8% split among the remaining three candidates.
As many as 69.5% of the 2.34 lakh voters had exercised their franchise.
Mr. Bhusnur told journalists that JD(S) has become irrelevant after this elections. "I knew I would win, but I was pleasantly surprised by this huge margin," he said. He claimed to have got some Muslim votes, which proved that the BJP was not 'an anti-Muslim party, as being portrayed by the Congress’.
