Karnataka polls: Siddaramaiah wins from Varuna, becomes MLA for 9th time

MYSURU: Senior Congress leader and former chief minister Siddaramaiah on Saturday got a landslide victory in the Varuna constituency, defeating his nearest rival by a margin of 46,006 votes and entering the Karnataka assembly for the ninth time.

The 75-year-old leader got 1,19,430 votes against 73,424 polled by his BJP rival and influential Lingayat leader V Somanna. The Bahujan Samaj Party candidate was in third place with 1,075 votes, according to the Election Commission website.

Five-time MLA and outgoing state housing minister Somanna was moved out of his Govindaraj Nagar constituency in Bengaluru for the first time to take the Congress strongman head-on in his home turf.

In 2018, Siddaramaiah left the Varuna seat for his son S Yathindra and went on to contest from Chamundeshwari and Badami. While he lost in Chamundeshwari to JD(S) candidate G T Deve Gowda, he defeated the BJP's B Sriramulu by slender a margin of 1,996 votes in Badami.

Siddaramaiah represented the Chamundeshwari constituency in Mysuru in the Karnataka assembly five times -- in 1983 as an Independent, in 1985 on a Janata Party ticket, in 1994 and 2004 for the Janata Dal, and in 2006 for the Congress by a lean margin of 257 votes.

In 2008, he shifted to Varuna which is also in the Mysuru region, and registered an easy victory that he repeated in 2013.