G.T. Deve Gowda of the Janata Dal (Secular), who trounced outgoing Chief Minister Siddaramaiah by 36,042 votes in Chamundeshwari constituency, has emerged as a giant killer to inflict a major blow on the Congress in what was traditionally its stronghold.
Mr. Gowda’s win, in what was a high-decibel campaign whose rancour echoed across the country, is akin to the proverbial David taking on the giant Goliath and beating him fair and square.
Though Chamundeshwari was dubbed as the battleground for a clash of the titans involving Mr. Siddaramaiah and JD(S) State president H.D. Kumaraswamy, much like the 2006 byelections, Mr. Gowda was no dummy candidate and had strong credentials as a prominent Vokkaliga leader who had nurtured the constituency for five years.
Mr. Gowda was elected from Chamundeshwari in 2013, when he beat Satyanarayana of the Congress by a margin of nearly 7,000 votes. That he managed to increase the margin to over 36,000 votes against a sitting CM underlines the strong consolidation of castes in the prominently Vokkaliga belt, apart from the anti-incumbency against Mr. Siddaramaiah.
In a constituency of nearly 2.95 lakh voters, the Vokkaligas constituted the largest block with nearly 80,000 voters. But Mr. Siddaramaiah banked heavily on the strength of his ‘Bhagya’ programmes and made a desperate effort to reach out to the microscopic minorities in the constituency, including members of the Madiwala, Bovi, Adi Karnataka, Vishwakarma, Naika, and Kurubas communities.
The pre-poll surveys, all of which had spredicted a “tight finish going down to the wire”, also did not foresee the kind of anti-incumbency that had built up against Mr. Siddaramaiah who, perhaps, had sensed it and contested from Badami constituency as well, which may have saved him from an uncertain future in politics.
Mr. Siddaramaiah began his political career by winning the first elections from Chamundeshwari in 1983. He went on to contest eight times, winning on five occasions. Though he wanted to end his political career with a victory from Chamundeshwari, the voters united against him for his perceived indifference towards the constituency and failure to develop it.
