The Congress has declared Geetha Shivarajkumar as its candidate for the Shivamogga Lok Sabha constituency. The BJP is expected to field incumbent MP B.Y. Raghavendra for one more term. With that, the children of two former Chief Ministers will be in the contest for the Shivamogga seat.
Earlier contests
Ms. Shivarajkumar, daughter of the former Chief Minister late S. Bangarappa, contested for the seat on the JD(S) ticket in 2014 and lost against the former Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa by a huge margin. Ms. Shivarajkumar stood third after Mr. Yediyurappa and Congress candidate Manjunath Bhandary in that election. Mr. Yediyurappa had won by a margin of 3.63 lakh votes from the nearest rival of the Congress. This time, Ms. Shivarajkumar is likely to face Mr. Yediyurappa’s son, Mr. Raghavendra, who has been elected to Parliament three times. Interestingly, Mr. Raghavendra, in his first Lok Sabha election in 2009, had defeated Bangarappa.
In the byelection to the Shivamogga Lok Sabha seat held in 2018, after Mr. Yediyurappa’s resignation, Mr. Raghavendra fought against Madhu Bangarappa, Ms. Shivarajkumar’s brother who was the candidate of the JD(S)-Congress coalition, and won. Then the victory margin was over 52,000 votes. Both of them fought against each other a year later in 2019 and Mr. Raghavendra won by a margin of over 2.12 lakh votes. After defeating Bangarappa (in 2009) and Mr. Madhu Bangarappa, Mr. Raghavendra will now face Ms. Shivarajkumar.
Family turf
For almost three-decades, these two families have been winning the seat. Bangarappa was elected to Parliament for the first time in 1996 and then in 1999 on the Congress ticket. He joined the BJP and represented the constituency in 2004. Later, he resigned and contested as the Samajwadi Party candidate in the byelection in 2005 and won. Since 2009, the seat has been with Mr. Yediyurappa’s family.
Ms. Shivarajkumar’s husband and actor Shivarajkumar is expected to campaign extensively during the election. Among the eight Assembly segments in the Shivamogga Lok Sabha constituency, the Congress has won three — Bhadravati, Sagar, and Sorab. The JD(S) has won Shivamogga Rural. The remaining four — Shivamogga, Tirthahalli, Shikaripur, and Byndoor, have been won by the BJP.
