Karnataka: Congress's HD Thammaiah beats friend turned foe and BJP heavyweight CT Ravi in Chikmagalur

Congress's HD Thammaiah has won the Chikmagalur seat in a neck-and-neck fight with BJP heavyweight CT Ravi.
In the hotly contested seat, Thammaiah won by over 6,000 votes.

Thammaiah got over 50 per cent votes, while Ravi, who won the seat four times earlier, got 46.53 per of the votes. No other candidate, including one from JD(S), got over 2,000 votes.


Thammaiah denied C.T. Ravi a fifth term from the seat. Incidentally, he was not so long ago considered the right hand man of Ravi - he was with him for over 14 years.

With this win, Thammaiah has become the second Lingayat to win from the seat after CMS Shastri, who won way back in 1967.

Note that the constituency used to be a Congress stronghold; former prime minister Indira Gandhi had even won from this seat in 1978. However, CT Ravi managed to breach the Congress fort in 2004 and has been winning from the seat since then. CT Ravi won the 2018 election by defeating Congress's Shankar BL with a margin of 26,314 votes.

The Chikmagalur constituency has been a key battleground in Karnataka politics for years. With a population of over 1.3 million people, the constituency comprises a mix of urban and rural areas.

The district is known for its coffee plantations, and it has a significant population of Lingayats, Vokkaligas, and Muslims. The Lingayats are considered to be the most dominant community in this constituency, and both the Congress and the BJP were trying to win their support.