The ruling BJP in Karnataka bagged two out of three seats in the by-polls held on April 18. The BJP retained its Belagavi Parliament seat and wrested the Basava Kalyan Assembly seat from the Congress party, which managed to hold on to the Maski Assembly seat.
In a close fight, BJP's Mangala Angadi won the Belagavi Parliament seat after defeating the Congress candidate Satish Jarkiholi in the bypolls necessitated by the demise of her husband and Union Minister Suresh Angadi in September last year. Mangala won 4,35,202 votes against sitting MLA from Yamakanamardi Satish Jarkiholi, who bagged 4,32,299 votes.
Interestingly, BJP holds six out of the eight Assembly segments in Belagavi. Angadi had won the Parliament seat four consecutive times and the BJP, hoping to benefit from the "sympathy" factor fielded Angadi to take on the former minister and Valmiki leader Satish Jarkiholi. However, the saffron party managed only a low-margin (2,903 votes) victory owing to a split in Maratha votes after MES chose to field its own candidate.
"Satish Jarkiholi is a working president of the Congress party, is influential in the district and known as Sahukar. KPCC chief D. K. Shivakumar and Leader of opposition Siddaramaiah campaigned here extensively. The Congress has funded the MES candidate to split the BJP votes and MES dented the BJP votes by bagging 1.20 lakh votes. We have understood this ploy of our opponents," said Union Minister Prahlad Joshi.
Joshi also ruled out Ramesh Jarkiholi's scandal and the COVID-19 management by the BJP government as factors that may have impacted the party's performance in the bypolls.
In Maski, the Congress candidate Basanagouda Turvihal bagged 86,222 votes and defeated BJP's Pratapgouda Patil by 30,641 votes. Pratapgouda Patil had defected from the Congress along with 16 other Congress and JDS rebels in 2019 leading to the collapse of the JDS-Congress coalition government and the formation of the BJP government. On the other hand, Turvihal was BJP's defeated candidate in the May 2018 Assembly elections, who had lost by a very narrow margin of 200 votes. Turvihal crossed over to the Congress to contest the bypolls and the sympathy factor could be one of the factors for his win.
In Basavakalyan, BJP's Sharanu Salgar, a Lingayat leader from Kalaburgi, wrested the seat from the Congress by defeating Mala, wife of sitting MLA B. Narayan Rao, who passed away due to Covid-19 last year. Salgar, who bagged 70,556 votes, won the seat by a margin of 20,449 votes. In the fray were BJP rebel candidate Mallikarjun Khuba and Syed Yasrab Ali Quadri of the JDS, which made it a multi-cornered fight.
"Congress has had an unprecedent win in Maski as people have rejected BJP's Operation Kamala. The voters here were not carried away by [the CM's son] Vijayendra's money power. We lost Basava Kalyan due to the JDS fielding its candidate which led to split in secular votes. In Belagavi, our party had lost by four lakh votes in the last elections. This time, we were hopeful of Satish Jarkiholi winning it for us. He has given a tough fight, " said leader of the opposition Siddaramaiah.
