In a surprising turn of events, the sole candidate of the JD(S) to win a Lok Sabha seat in Karnataka has “decided” to resign in order to allow party patriarch H.D. Deve Gowda to be re-elected to Parliament.
Prajwal Revanna, Deve Gowda's grandson from his son H.D. Revanna, won from Hassan by a margin of 1.4 lakh votes against A. Manju of the BJP. There has been no announcement on whether the JD(S) has accepted Prajwal's decision.
Prajwal Revanna spoke about resigning from the Hassan constituency during a chat with reporters in Hassan on Friday. The JD(S) had a disastrous outing in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, with the party winning just one of the eight seats it contested in Karnataka. The JD(S) had contested in alliance with the Congress, which also won just one of 20 seats. The BJP won 25 of the 28 seats in Karnataka.
Prajwal's offer came after Deve Gowda, who contested from Tumkur, lost by a narrow margin of 13,339 votes to G.S. Basavaraj of the BJP. Another grandson of Deve Gowda, Nikhil Kumaraswamy, lost in Mandya to Sumalatha Ambareesh, an independent backed by the BJP, by a margin of over 1.2 lakh votes.
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Prajwal was quoted by ANI as saying, “To reinstate confidence of the JD(S) cadre, we have to fill the gap left by the defeat of H.D. Deve Gowda. Therefore, I've decided to tender my resignation. I want him to be victorious once again from Hassan”. Prajwal also claimed he had thought about the decision on Thursday night.
Hassan was Deve Gowda's stronghold, which he, ironically, vacated for Prajwal to make his electoral debut. Deve Gowda had won from Hassan five times since 1991, losing only once in—in 1999.