The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Impressive show by Congress in city

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, May 14, 2004

Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Impressive show by Congress in city

By Our Special Correspondent

BANGALORE, MAY 13. While the Congress suffered at the hustings across the State, the party, led by the Chief Minister, S.M. Krishna, has done well in Bangalore city winning eight of the 12 Assembly seats here. The Bharatiya Janata Party managed to bag the remaining seats.

Of course, Mr. Krishna was the prominent winner from Chamarajpet defeating "Mukhyamantri" Chandru of the BJP. Mr. Krishna had opted out of his native Assembly constituency of Maddur and had contested from Chamarajpet and the BJP had gone to town stating that Mr. Krishna, the captain of the Congress here, was himself shaky.

A notable winner has been Roshan Baig of the Congress. Despite being under the cloud in the Telgi stamp paper racket, Mr. Baig held on to his constituency — Jayamahal — winning comfortably from the BJP candidate and social thinker, Mumtaz Ali Khan. One of the features of the results has been that some grassroots workers such as N.L. Narendra Babu (Rajajinagar), V. Somanna (Binnypet) and former Mayor of Bangalore, K. Chandrashekar (Basavangudi), all from the Congress, made it.

A contrasting picture emerged for the BJP in the segments of Bangalore South Lok Sabha Constituency. The BJP State President, H.N.Ananth Kumar won from here, but the party suffered heavily in the Assembly segments, retaining only the Chickpet constituency. The ceramic tile dealer P.C. Mohan retained the Chickpet seat. The BJP, in all, got four seats from the city, the number it had in 1999. The party lost Rajajinagar and Basavangudi, while it gained in Shantinagar (S. Raghu) and Bharatinagar (Nirmal Kumar Surana), opening the account for the first time there. The former chief secretary, J. Alexander, of the Congress lost to Nirmal Kumar Surana of the BJP from Bharatinagar. The Congress had reluctantly nominated Mr. Alexander as its candidate and that too in the last minute.

Seven members of the dissolved Assembly held their seats — Katta Subramanya Naidu (BJP - Shivajinagar); Chickpet (BJP - P.C. Mohan); Jayamahal (Congress - Roshan Baig); Gandhinagar (Congress - Dinesh Gundu Rao); Binnypet (Congress - V. Somanna); Jayanagar (Congress - Ramalinga Reddy); and Malleswaram (Congress — M.R. Seetharam).

Mr. Somanna had won in 1999 contesting as an independent candidate.

One shocking defeat for the BJP in the city has been that of Suresh Kumar, the party spokesperson and a person who had earned the title "model legislator" for his pro-active role in the last Assembly. Mr. Suresh Kumar lost to Mr. Narendra Babu.

The other parties drew a blank in the city. The only notable candidate in the fray from the Janata Dal (S) was film actor, Anant Nag.

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