Karnataka Elections: JD(S) Leader HD Kumaraswamy Wins From Channapatna Seat

JD(S) leader and former Karnataka CM HD Kumaraswamy.

(Photo: The Quint)

Janata Dal (Secular) leader and former Karnataka Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy won from the Channapatna constituency with a margin of 12,113 votes, defeating five-time MLA and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader CP Yogeshwara.

In 2018 assembly elections, HD Kumaraswamy, was elected from two constituencies – Channapatna and Ramanagara. He retained the former and then became the chief minister to head the JD(S)-Congress coalition government.

The government however only lasted for about 14 months, as 13 Congress and JD(S) MLAs resigned, resulting in the collapse of the coalition.

It was a tough fight between the BJP and JD(S) in the segment, as BJP’s Yogeshwara had been elected five times from the seat since 1999.

He won as an independent in 1999, and then from the Congress, BJP, and Samajwadi Party (SP). 

He had faced defeat in the 2018 polls, when Kumaraswamy entered the fray and won by a margin of 21,530 votes.

Notably, in the 2013 polls, Yogeshwara as an SP candidate had defeated Kumaraswamy's wife Anitha Kumaraswamy by 6,464 votes.

The constituency has 2,30,327 voters, of which 1.10 lakh are Vokkaliga, 29,000 are Muslims, 42,000 are SCs and 15,000 STs.

In the 2023 Karnataka Assembly elections, there were a total of 2,16,448 eligible electors in the constituency, of which 106167 were male and 1,10,272 female and nine registered voters were of the third gender.