Karnataka's Close Shave, Four Seats With Vote Margin Under 700

New Delhi: The closely contested Karnataka Election had four seats with a vote margin of less than 700.

Pratapgouda Patil of the Indian National Congress won with just 213 votes in the constituency of Maski. The difference went down to 409 in Pavagada where Venkataramanappa of the Indian National Congress emerged winner.

Even after putting a brilliant show in the Karnataka elections, the BJP hasn’t yet managed to beat the vote share of the Congress. This also shows the strategic strength is the BJP poll machinery which manages to get more seats even with a lower vote share.

As per the data released by the Election Commission of India, Congress party led in terms of vote share in Karnataka with 37.9 percent of the votes to its name. The BJP, on the other hand, had got 36.2 percent of the votes.

Interestingly, BJP has never managed to get a higher vote share than the Congress in Karnataka.

In 2008 elections, when the party put up its best show with 110 seats to its name and formed the government, BJP was still behind Congress in terms of vote share.

In that election, BJP had managed to get 33.86 percent of the vote share, while as its main competitor Congress had managed to get 35.13 percent of the vote share, despite getting 30 seats less than the saffron party.

In 2013, BJP had won 40 seats in the state and had managed to get 19.9 percent of the vote share in comparison to the Congress’ 36.6 percent.

Another close contest had Basavanagouda Patil of the Indian National Congress winning by a thin margin of 555 votes in Hirekerur.

Channabasappa Sathyappa Shivalli of the same party won the constituency of Kundgol with a vote margin of only 634. Another incidence of the close contest was in Aland, where Guttedar Subhash Rukmayya of the BJP crossed the finish line.