After nearly two years of proceedings, the high court ruled in favour of the petitioner, the BJP’s K S Manjunath Gowda, who had lost to Najegowda in the May 2023 election by just 248 votes.
With the high court putting its order on hold for the next 30 days, Nanjegowda can now move the Supreme Court on appeal.
Citing alleged irregularities in the Malur poll’s counting process, the court has directed a recount within four weeks. At the time, the District Election Officer had allegedly failed to submit videos of the counting process.
In 2023, the Malur constituency saw its most closely contested election since Karnataka became a state in 1978. The Congress has been the most successful party in Malur since then, winning the seat altogether four times. The BJP has won it twice and the Janata Dal (Secular) once so far.
The Malur seat falls within the larger Scheduled Caste-reserved Kolar Lok Sabha constituency, which had been a Congress stronghold for decades before the party lost it for only the second and third times in the 2019 and 2024 parliamentary elections since 1952.
Nanjegowda was the sitting Congress MLA in the 2023 poll, when the party again fielded him against the BJP’s Manjunath Gowda, who had won the seat in 2013 as a JD(S) candidate.
Though the 2023 contest was primarily between the candidates of the Congress and the BJP – the two most dominant parties in Karnataka – third-placed Independent candidate Hoodi Vijayakumar changed the dynamic in the poll.
Vijayakumar secured 28.48% of the vote share, just short of Nanjegowda’s 29.4% vote share and Manjunath’s 29.26% votes. The JD(S) candidate received only 10.17% votes to finish at fourth place. In every other Malur election, the winning candidate had always garnered at least 40% votes.
With a major slice of the vote share cornered by the Independent candidate, Nanjegowda and Manjunath Gowda were separated by a wafer thin margin of 248 votes. Vijayakumar himself trailed Nanjegowda by just under 1,600 votes. Najegowda’s 248-vote winning margin was the fourth lowest in the 2023 Karnataka elections.
Less than a week after the election results were announced, Manjunath moved the Karnataka High Court seeking a recount in Malur. “Counting officials called me on the phone and said that I had won the elections. But later, it was announced that the Congress candidate had won with a margin of 248 votes. Hence, I have moved the court, seeking a recount of the votes polled,” Manjunath had said at the time.
The high court’s order has come as a setback for Nanjegowda, with the BJP alleging that the Congress “stole” votes in the 2023 state Assembly polls. Nanjegowda, Congress sources said, has been aspiring to become the next chairman of the Karnataka Milk Federation that owns dairy brand Nandini. However, he may now lose his Assembly membership if the outcome of the vote recount goes in favour of Manjunath.
The development has come amid the Congress’s “vote chori (theft)” campaign, through which it has been targeting the Election Commission (EC) and the BJP across the country over various alleged electoral irregularities.
Reacting to the high court’s order, the BJP’s Leader of the Opposition (LoP) in the Karnataka Assembly, R Ashoka, called it a “direct indictment” of the Congress’s politics. He asked if Rahul Gandhi would now launch a “Vote Chori Yatra” against Nanjegowda, accusing the Congress of indulging in “vote chori”.