MYSURU: For Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, winning both Mysuru- Kodagu and Chamarajanagar Lok Sabha seats, which are his backyard, has become a prestige issue and he has assigned the responsibility of ensuring the victory of party candidates to local MLAs and leaders.
As both seats are with BJP now, Siddaramaiah has drawn a road map to wrest the constituencies to further strengthen his hold on his home turf. He has told the MLAs to get a lead of over 2.5 lakh votes in seven out of eight Assembly segments falling in the Mysuru-Kodagu constituency.
Congress has Narashimaraja, Chamraja, Periyapatna, Virajpet and Madikeri constituencies, JDS has two -- Hunsur and Chamundeshwari, and BJP the lone KR Nagar constituency. Siddaramaiah wants a lead of 50,000 votes from Hunsur and Chamundeshwari and one lakh from Narashimaraja and Chamaraja constituencies. But it is not easy for the sitting MLAs as the voting pattern in Assembly and Parliamentary elections is different.
In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, BJP secured a lead of 24,953 votes in Madikeri, 34,567 in Krishnaraja, 32,302 in Chamaraja and 17,745 votes in Virajpet. Congress got 19,357 votes Periyapatna, 16,408 in Hunsur, 8,264 in Chamundeshwari and 35,518 in Narashimaraja. BJP managed to win by a margin of 30,908 votes.
In 2019, BJP stunned Congress, winning the seat with a whopping margin of 1,36,194 votes. This was because the votes in Madikeri went up to 41,976, Virajpet 41,497, Chamundeshwari 22,150, Krishnaraja 52,074 and Chamaraja 46,051. Congress managed to get leads in Periyapatna with 23,777 votes, Hunusr 3,798 and Narashimaraja 41,979 votes.
Siddaramaiah wants the legislators to take the Congress government guarantees to every household to contain the BJP influence and improve the lead in the constituency. He also wants to win back Vokkaligas. He has asked two ministers and sitting MLAs to prove their mettle and has also launched a series of development programmes in the district.
Though Chamarajanagar was considered a stronghold of Congress, the party’s candidate R Dhruvanarayana lost to BJP’s V Srinivasa Prasad by a slender margin of 1,256 votes. Druvanarayana polled 1,41,277 votes, managing a lead in the eight Assembly segments of Heggadadevanakote, Nanjangud, Varuna, T Narsipur, Hanur, Kollegal, Chamarajanagar and Gundlupet. But Prasad pipped him, securing 9,791 votes in Nanjangud, 9,681 votes in Chamarajanagar and 15,510 in Gundlupet.
The Congress high command recently cleared Sunil Bose as the candidate for the Chamarajanagar constituency. The party now expects Social Welfare Minister HC Mahadevappa to see his son win the election with an impressive margin.
Siddaramaiah has fixed the responsibility on veteran legislators Puttaranga Shetty, R Krishnamurthy and Anil Chikkamadu, and first-timers Ganesh Prasad and Darshan Druvanarayan. Since the Varuna constituency is also part of the Chamarajanagar Lok Sabha constituency, he has assigned his son Dr Yathindra to see that the margin is more than the Assembly election. It is also time for former Congress MLA R Narendra to prove his influence in the Hanur constituency that is represented by JDS.
Congress is targeting women voters, who are the main beneficiaries of the state government’s guarantees, to ensure victory. But the Grand Old Party is feeling the heat as BJP, apart from banking on the Modi factor, is also trying to consolidate Lingayat, Nayaka, Devanaga, and other backward caste votes to come back strong in Gundlupet, Nanjangud, Chamrajnagar and Kollegal, which happens to be the hometown of BJP candidate S Balaraj.