Karnataka elections: AICC president Mallikarjun Kharge wins back Gulbarga

Congress is leading in 5 seats that come under his parliamentary constituency

Even as the Congress looked to be on course to win its highest tally in the Karnataka Assembly election since 1989, leading in 133 of the 224 seats, there was a huge victory for All India Congress Committee president Mallikarjun Kharge.

The Congress was leading in five of the eight Assembly segments that come under his Gulbarga Lok Sabha constituency, a sharp reversal from 2019, when the Bharatiya Janata Party had won six of those segments.

There was a lot riding on this election for Kharge, elected the AICC president just last year after he tasted the first defeat of his career in over four decades in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

Interestingly, the 2023 trend was better than what the party managed in the 2018 Assembly polls when it had won four segments in the Gulbarga Lok Sabha seat.

In Chittapur, Kharge’s son Priyank was in the lead at 1.30 pm—in an embarrassment to Kharge he had lost this segment in the 2019 LS polls, even though his son was the incumbent MLA.

The party also looked set to retain the Afzalpur and Jewargi seats. It gained at the expense of the BJP in the Sedam seat and Gulbarga Dakshin seats. However, its incumbent MLA Kaneez Fatima was trailing the BJP candidate in the Gulbarga Uttar seat.

The BJP looked set to retain the Gulbarga Rural seat and the Janata Dal (Secular) the Gurmitkal seat.

This result will come as a boost to Kharge, who was known as Solillada Sardara, an undefeated leader till 2019 when he was trumped by a Congress rebel who contested on the BJP ticket, Umesh Jadhav.

Addressing reporters outside his residence in Bengaluru, Kharge said: “Winning and losing elections is a part of democracy. After having won 12 times, I lost the last time. All I can say is that even after a loss one should be with the people, and then they will surely back you.”

Kharge praised the whole party machinery, adding that the credit for the victory in the state could not go to any single person. “Beyond everything else, this victory belongs to the people. The people were angry about misrule.”