Haveri (Karnataka): BJP candidate and former Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai won from the Haveri Lok Sabha seat. Bommai defeated Congress candidate Anandayya Gaddadevarmath by a margin of 43513 votes.
Bommai polled 705538 votes while Gaddadevarmath bagged 662025 votes in the keenly contested contest. Haveri is one of the 28 Lok Sabha constituencies in Karnataka. It was created in 2008 after the delimitation exercise. Since then it has been a BJP stronghold as its first member of parliament on the seat Shivakumar Chanabasappa Udasi has won from it thrice since 2009.
This time, however, BJP fielded its Bommai from Haveri as the sitting MP, Shivakumar Udasi, had earlier announced his retirement from electoral politics after the current term ends.
Bommai will make his debut in the Lok Sabha. Bommai’s father, S R Bommai, was a Janata Parivar stalwart and had served as the 11th Chief Minister of Karnataka in the late 1980s.
Bommai is from the dominant Veerashaiva-Lingayat community to which Yediyurappa also belongs. The community is counted as a key vote-base of the saffron party.
The total number of registered voters in this constituency in 2024 polls was 1792774, and the seat saw a voting turnout of 77.60 per cent (1391214 total count of votes), according to the Election Commission’s data. The seat went to polls in phase 3 on May 7, 2024.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha Polls, Shivakumar Udasi of BJP won from Haveri, getting 683,660 votes, comprising 53.97% of the total number of votes polled. He defeated D.R. Patil of Congress by a margin of 1,40,882 votes. Udasi S.C had won from this seat in 2014 as well, polling 566,790 votes (50.79%) and defeating Saleem Ahmed of Congress by a margin of 87,571 votes.
