Rape-accused MP Prajwal Revanna has lost the Hassan Lok Sabha constituency to his Congress opponent, Shreyas Patel, by a margin of 42,649 votes in a closely fought election.
Thirty-two-year-old Shreyas Patel secured 6,72,988 votes, which was 49% of the total votes cast. Prajwal got 6,30,339 votes or 46% of the 13.55 lakh votes polled in the constituency. As many as 8,541 people chose NOTA. Prajwal had won the seat in the 2019 elections with 6,76,606 — a margin of 1,41,324 votes — defeating A Manju.
Reacting to the numbers even before the results were made official, JD(S) president HD Kumaraswamy told media that he was “not happy with the Hassan results. We made some mistakes. (Or else) we could have won another four to five seats.” But Kumaraswamy admitted that they were aware that Prajwal might lose the elections.
The election to the Hassan seat was one of the most closely watched contests for several reasons, not least because of the allegations of widespread sexual abuse against Prajwal, which emerged in the week leading up to voting day. However, the allegations became widely known only after voting on April 26. Since then, four women have filed complaints of rape against Prajwal, who was arrested on May 31 when he returned to India. He is now being questioned by the Special Investigation Team, formed to look into the allegations against him.
Read: Silenced by fear: Survivors reveal years of abuse in the Revanna household
The two contestants — Prajwal and Shreyas — belong to powerful political families who have been feuding since the time of their grandfathers. While Prajwal is the grandson of HD Deve Gowda, Shreyas is the grandson of former minister the late G Puttaswamy Gowda, who defeated Deve Gowda and won the Hassan Parliamentary seat in the 1999 election. Puttaswamy and Deve Gowda had faced off against each other twice before that in the Assembly elections.
Shreyas’ candidature turned out to be a good choice for the Congress. Even though the JD(S) showed a poor performance in the 2023 Assembly elections, Shreyas ate into the vote share of HD Revanna, then four-time MLA from Holenarasipura. Revanna held on to the Holenarasipura seat by a slim margin of 3,152 votes.
Winning the Hassan seat was considered a relatively safe seat for the JD(S), which is struggling to remain relevant politically in Karnataka, especially after the drubbing it received in the 2023 Assembly elections.
JD(S) had held the Hassan seat for seven terms since 1991, except for the 1999 election, which the Congress won. Deve Gowda himself represented the seat five times and vacated it for Prajwal in 2019. Losing the Hassan seat now, especially given that there is a widespread backlash against Prajwal over his alleged abuse of many women, the alleged involvement of Revanna and Bhavani will make it difficult for the party to reestablish its dominance in the district. Prajwal Revanna was widely perceived as being an absentee MP, inaccessible to the public and even journalists.
Read: Power and fear: The turbulent story of Prajwal Revanna
The JD(S), which tied up with the BJP in September last year in a desperate attempt at reviving its political fortunes, was on the back foot in Hassan in the run-up to the elections when the saffron party’s biggest leader in Hassan, Preetham Gowda refused to campaign for Prajwal. Preetham wrested the Hassan Assembly seat for the BJP from the JD(S) with a comfortable margin in the 2018 Assembly elections but lost to Swaroop Prakash, the JD(S) candidate in the 2023 Assembly elections.
Despite the alliance, Preetham refused to campaign for Prajwal until JD(S)’ state president HD Kumaraswamy met him personally. But even after that, Preetham’s reluctance was evident: he was seen on the campaign trail but never sought votes for Prajwal. Instead, he campaigned in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s name.