Bypolls: Cong sweeps south, Priyanka scores a winning debut from Wayanad

Wayanad/Bengaluru: Southern electors gave the thumbs up to Congress nominees, including its top leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, as the grand old party on Saturday swept the Lok Sabha and Assembly bypolls held in Karnataka and the Left-ruled Kerala.

The Wayanad voters did not disappoint the Gandhi family for the third time in a row, picking Priyanka to succeed her brother Rahul Gandhi. She defeated the nominees fielded by the ruling Left and the BJP.

Rahul Gandhi, Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, had won back-to-back electoral contests from this Kerala hill constituency in 2019 and 2024. However, he vacated it after winning from the family's Uttar Pradesh bastion Rae Bareilly this year, following which the party fielded Priyanka. And she triumphed with an impressive margin of over 4.10 lakh votes, demonstrating Wayanad's preference for the Gandhi family.

Besides, the party retained the Palakkad Assembly seat. Chelakkara, a left stronghold, was retained by the CPI (M).

In neighbouring Karnataka, it was Congress all the way, with the party winning all the three Assembly seats where bypolls were held.

The Mallikarjuna Kharge-led party wrested Shiggaon and Channapatna from the opposition BJP-led bloc which had put up a spirited fight and the electoral victory was being seen as an endorsement of the leadership of Congress Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and his deputy D K Shivakumar, also the party's state unit chief.

The elections were a litmus test of sorts for the two leaders. While Siddaramaiah is embroiled in the MUDA land allotment case, Shivakumar had invested a lot of pride in ensuring his party's good show in the elections, particularly in Channapatna, coming under his home district Ramanagara, a Vokkaliga-dominated region.

The Congress retained its stronghold of Sandur, but the success in the rest of the seats must have counted more sweet to the ruling party.

Congress' C P Yogeeshwara won the high profile Channapatna seat by defeating JD(S) candidate and Union Minister H D Kumaraswamy's son Nikhil Kumaraswamy.

Similarly, Congress' Yasir Ahmed Khan Pathan won the Shiggaon Assembly segment by defeating former Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai's son Bharath Bommai.

"Our guarantees, Siddaramaiah’s leadership and our workers and MLAs are responsible for our victory," Shivakumar said.

He said neither Nikhil Kumaraswamy nor Bharath Bommai lost the election. In fact, this was the defeat of their parents-Union Minister Kumaraswamy and BJP MP Basavaraj Bommai. Both had resigned as MLAs after winning the Lok Sabha polls from Channapatna and Shiggaon, respectively.

Buoyed by the party's good show, Siddaramaiah said he won in the 'people’s court'.

He gave credit to the guarantee schemes for the party's victory in the assembly bypolls in Sandur, Shiggaon and Channapatna.

"You know what Mahatma Gandhi said. He said people's court is better than the courts. Now people's court has given me its verdict," he told reporters.

The CM is an accused in the MUDA site allotment scam where 14 sites in upmarket of Mysuru was allotted to his wife, Parvathi. After the controversy broke out, Parvathi returned the sites to MUDA. He had been booked by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in connection with the issue.