Congress candidate HM Ganesh Prasad has won the Gundlupet assembly seat by 36,675 votes, defeating BJP's incumbent CS Niranjan Kumar. In the run-up to the May 10 election, the constituency, in Chamarajanagar district, had drawn the attention of all as the seat has been dominated by only a few political families in the last 15 Assembly elections.
Former Minister and five-time MLA from the seat HS Mahadevaprasad’s son, Ganesh, will carry on the family legacy — Mahadevaprasad had won all assembly elections from this seat between 1994 and 2013. He won from the seat in 1994 as a Janata Dal candidate and as a Janata Dal (United) candidate in 1999. He later joined JD(S) and won the 2004 elections. In 2008 and 2013 he switched the side to Congress and retained the seat for successive terms. After his death in 2017, his wife Geetha Mahadevaprasad won in the by-election.
Gundlupet, bordering Tamil Nadu and Kerala, is on the radar due to its political dynamics and demographic composition. The seat is dominated by Lingayat voters. The Dalit community is also dominant here with the Scheduled Caste (SC) population accounting for approximately 19.14 percent of total population in the constituency.
In the 2018 assembly election, Niranjan Kumar had emerged the winner with a substantial vote share of 51.48 percent. He secured a convincing victory with a margin of 16,684 votes, defeating MC Mohan Kumari of Congress.
The constituency has a total of 202,882 voters, including 100,850 male voters and 102,016 female. The sex ratio in the constituency stands at 1012 and the literacy rate is 61.43 percent.
Karnataka witnessed a voter turnout of 73.19 percent on the polling day, May 10. The counting of votes will be held on May 13 and the results will be announced the same day.
First Published: May 13, 2023 12:46 PM IST
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