SHIMOGA: The result of Shikaripur byelection has sent a strong message to the Yeddyurappa family. The victory margin is a clear indication that people in the constituency have not seen an able leader in B Y Raghavendra unlike his father B S Yeddyurappa.
MP and former chief minister Yeddyurappa had successfully contested from Shikaripur seven times. He lost only once to B N Mahalingappa of the Congress in 1999.
After Yeddyurappa won the recent Lok Sabha election, he proposed his son Raghavendra’s name for the Assembly byelection. With no alternative, the BJP also gave the ticket to Raghavendra, though it was not sure of his rapport with voters of the constituency.
Right from the beginning of the campaign, both Yeddyurappa and Raghavendra were claiming that they would win with a huge margin. However, the voters sent a strong message to Yeddyurappa and his family that they would not accept Raghavendra, who just managed to scrape through. Despite his son’s victory, Yeddyurappa was not in a jubilant mood unlike in the previous elections.
In the last Assembly election, Yeddyurappa defeated his one-time close friend and Congress candidate Shantaveerappa Gowda with a margin of 24,425 votes.
Yeddyurappa got 69,126 votes while Shantaveerappa got 44,701 votes. In the recent Lok Sabha elections, the BJP polled approximately 80,000 votes while the Congress and JD(S) polled 18,000 and 16,000 votes respectively in Shikaripur.
Because of this, both Yeddyurappa and Raghavendra were sure of a good lead in this election as well.
But it was not to be, with the margin reduced to just 6,430.
The reason could be the tacit JD(S) support to the Congress candidate and the sympathy for Shantaveerappa. Besides, Raghavendra depended more on his father than his own charisma. People and party workers were also not happy with Raghavendra over his handling of issues. Meanwhile, Raghavendra has admitted that he might not be as good a leader as his father.
The changing trend shows that elections in future would not be a cakewalk for the Yeddyurappa family in Shikaripur.