Kumaraswamy wins, wife loses

Bangalore, May 8 (IANS) Former Karnataka chief minister and Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) leader H.D. Kumaraswamy won from the Ramanagaram assembly constituency Wednesday but his wife lost the poll to the Samajwadi Party (SP) nominee.

Anitha Kumaraswamy lost from the Channapatna constituency to the SP’s C.P. Yogeshwara in the May 5 assembly elections, the results of which were announced Wednesday.

Kumaraswamy, son of former prime minister H.D. Deve Gowda and a Lok Sabha member from the same constituency, defeated Maridevaru of the Congress with a margin of 25,398 votes. He polled 83,447 votes against 58,049 of Maridevaru.

Kumaraswamy became the chief minister in February 2006 when the JD-S formed the second coalition government in Karnataka with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) after pulling out of the coalition with the Congress, which was formed in June 2004 following a fractured verdict in the April-May 2004 assembly polls.

As part of the agreement with the BJP to share power for 20 months each, Kumaraswamy resigned from the chief minister post in October 2007 but broke alliance with the BJP, leading to the fall of the second coalition government and a spell of President’s rule in the state before the 2008 polls.

Officials said the BJP may finish second along with the Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) at 39 seats each. The Congress has won or is leading in at least 120 seats, and is set to form the next government independently.

The state assembly has 225 seats, one of them is reserved for the Anglo-Indian community, and election in one constituency was ountermanded following the death of a candidate.

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