Bangalore Rural : Sitting MP and Congress candidate DK Suresh lost the Bangalore Rural seat to BJP's C N Manjunath in the Lok Sabha Election 2024. The Congress received a huge setback in this seat, which is one of the crucial LS constituencies in the Karnataka Capital City, where Deputy Chief Minister D K Shivakumar's brother DK Suresh was defeated.
Though a Congress stronghold, Bangalore Rural witnessed an interesting battle in 2024 Lok Sabha polls as incumbent Congress MP, the only party candidate to win the 2019 Lok Sabha elections in Karnataka, was pitted against BJP-JD(S) combine candidate and noted cardiac surgeon C N Manjunath.
Suresh, 57, is the younger brother of Deputy Chief Minister and state Congress chief D K Shivakumar. He suffered a crushing blow in the hands of Manjunath, who is the son-in-law of former prime minister H D Deve Gowda.
In Bangalore Rural segment, D K Suresh defeated former MLA Anitha Kumaraswamy in the 2013 bypoll after her husband and former Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy resigned from Lok Sabha following his win in the Assembly polls that year, and was re-elected in the 2014 and 2019 general elections. Suresh is the second richest contesting candidate from Karnataka. He declared assets worth Rs 593.04 crore in his nomination.Congress candidate Venkataramane Gowda, popularly known as 'Star Chandru', emerged as the richest candidate with assets over Rs 622 crore, as per a report by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR).
As for Manjunath, the son-in-law of Deve Gowda and brother-in-law of former Chief Minister and state JD(S) President H D Kumaraswamy, he is contesting on BJP symbol and had headed the state-owned Jayadeva Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences and Research for 17 years before retiring in January this year. Manjunath is credited with putting in place the practice of “treatment first, payment next. A low-cost technique of performing Balloon Mitral Valvuloplasty (BMV) in difficult cases is now popularly called the ‘Manjunath technique’.
2024 polls: The total number of registered voters in this constituency in 2024 polls was 2802580, and the seat saw a voting turnout of 68.30% (1914030 total count of votes), according to the Election Commission’s data. The seat went to polls in phase 2 on April 26, 2024.
In the 2019 LS Polls, D.K. Suresh of Congress retained the seat, getting 878,258 votes, comprising 54.15% of the total number of votes polled. He defeated Ashwath Narayan Gowda by a margin of 2,06,870 votes. In 2014, Suresh had won from this seat, polling 652,723 votes (44.85%) and defeating Muniraju Gowda P of BJP by a margin of 2,31,480 votes.
