Moily tastes defeat, fails to perform hat trick

Bengaluru: Senior Congress leader and former Chief Minister M Veerappa Moily was defeated by BJP’s B N Bache Gowda in Chikkaballapur by a margin of 1,82,110 votes, Election Commission said on Thursday.

While Gowda secured 7,45,912 votes, Moily got5,63,802 votes.

Moily, a former union minister, was the joint candidate of the ruling Congress-JDS coalition.

Gowda had lost against Moily in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls by a narrow margin of about 9,500 votes.

Moily, who was the Karnataka Chief Minister from 1992 -1994, had also got elected as Chikkaballapur in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls.

The division of Vokkaliga votes was cited as the reason for Gowda’s defeat in 2014 as Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy, who also hails from the same community, had contested from Chikkaballapura then and ended up in third place by garnering over three lakh votes.

Moily, who hails from the coastal belt, was strongly dependent on JD(S) that has the strong support of the Vokkaligacommunity, to retain the seat that has been a Congressbastion.

However, with animosity between workers of both parties in other constituencies of old Mysuru region like Mandya, Mysore and Hassan, there were doubts about JD(S) workers completely supporting congress.

Along with anti-incumbency, Moily also faceddissidence within the Congress to his disadvantage, withseveral local leaders opposed to his candidacy.