BENGALURU: Kanakapura Assembly seat would have its second Chief Minister on Wednesday after a gap of 43 years through Chief Minister designate D.K. Shivakumar who is all set to take oath as Chief Minister on that date. Previously it was late Chief Minister Ramakrishna Hegde who represented the seat as Janata Party (JP) nominee in 1983 winning the Kanakapura by-poll to become Chief Minister.
Santhanur Assembly seat (no longer exists) in the then Bangalore Rural district was changed to Ramanagar district now renamed as Bengaluru South district was merged with Kanakapura in the 2028 delimitation of Assembly seats in Karnataka. Since the merger of Santhanur and Kanakapura Assembly seats, D.K. Shivakumar won successive elections in 2008, 2013, 2018 and 2023. Prior to the merger of two Assembly seats, Shivakumar won from Santhanur Assembly seat in 1989, 1994, 1999 and 2004 elections.
In 1983, PGR Sindhia, a former minister, won the Kanakapura Assembly seat but relinquished the seat for Ramakrishna Hegde to contest. Hegde won the by-poll and became the Chief Minister. Now, representing the Kanakapura Assembly seat, Shivakumar has been invited by Governor Thaawarchand Gehlot to take oath as Chief Minister on Wednesday at 4.05 pm.
In the 2023 election, Shivakumar won the seat by a margin of 1, 22, 392 votes against his nearest rival B. Nagaraju of Janata Dal Secular (JDS). From Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) incumbent Leader of Opposition R. Ashok was in the fray and ended up third securing 19, 753 votes. Ashok had also contested from Padmanabhanagar Assembly seat in Bengaluru and won it to enter the Assembly.
In his campaign at Kanakapura in May 2023 a couple of days before the voting date, Shivakumar made an appeal to voters of his Assembly constituency to exercise their franchise in his favour since he had the capacity to become Chief Minister in the current term (if Congress was voted to power). Sources said “Voters then backed Shivakumar to elevate their leader as Chief Minister.” Shivakumar’s victory margin was about 79,000 votes in the 2018 elections.
When in power, sources close to D.K. Shivakumar said he did initiate measures to improve the constituency such as distribution of transformers to farmers as a Minister of Energy, employment to local youths, a stadium in Kanakapura town no less than, a maternity hospital among many others to help him in his massive win in 2023.
Apart from development works, sources in Kanakapura said “Voters of Kanakapura vote for Shivakumar since there is alternate leadership in the seat that has helped Shivakumar to retain his seat in successive elections. Some nominees such as D.M. Vishwanath then as Janata Dal Secular nominee came close to defeating Shivakumar in the seat but could not succeed.”
“On many occasions, opposition parties fighting against Shivakumar in Assembly elections have turned out to be lopsided contests,” sources said.
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