'Kanakapura Rock' D K Shivakumar wins poll battle for eighth straight time

Maintaining his winning streak since 1989, Karnataka Congress chief and Vokkaliga strongman D K Shivakumar emerged victorious in the Assembly polls for the eighth consecutive time on Saturday, retaining his Kanakapura seat with a huge margin of 1,21,595 votes.

Shivakumar secured 1,42,156 votes against the 20,561 votes polled by his Janata Dal (Secular) rival B Nagaraju. Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) R Ashoka was in the third place with 19,602 votes.

Shivakumar’s victory margin was much higher than in 2018, when he won the seat by 79,909 votes, defeating JD(S) candidate Narayana Gowda. This is Shivakumar’s fourth win in a row from Kanakapura since its inception in 2008 following a delimitation exercise. Before that he represented the erstwhile Sathanur seat four times.

Nicknamed the ”Kanakapura Rock”, Shivakumar is a seven-time MLA and has maintained his election-winning streak since 1989.

Ashoka, the revenue minister who is considered to be the Vokkaliga face of the BJP, was fielded from Kanakapura with the hope that he would win the seat and help strengthen the party in the constituency.