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Half of K'taka seats to vote today

NT Correspondent

Bengaluru: As many as 14 Lok Sabha seats go to polls in Karnataka on Friday alongside other states as the effectiveness of the BJPJD(S) combine faces its first real challenge.

Voting will take place in Chamarajanagara, MysuruKodagu, Bengaluru Central, North, South and Rural, Kolar, Chikkaballapura, Tumakuru, Chitradurga, Mandya, Hassan, Dakshina Kannada and Udupi-Chikkamagaluru on Friday.

The remaining 14 seats will cast their ballot on May 7. Under the seat sharing arrangement, JD(S) is contesting three seats, all of which go to polls on Friday.

These include Hassan which will witness incumbent JD(S) MP Prajwal Revanna take on Congressman Shreyas Patel.

Mandya will see JD(S) state president HD Kumaraswamy fighting against Congress candidate Venkataramane Gowda, also known as ‘Star Chandru.

Does my one vote really matter? Yes!

• In the 2004 Karnataka assembly elections, AR Krishnamurthy of the Janata Dal (Secular) lost to Congress’s R Dhruvanarayan by just one vote. This happened in the Santhemarahalli (SC) assembly seat.
• In the 2018 Karnataka Assembly elections, almost 25 seats were won with less than 5,000 margin. Siddaramaiah won his own seat of Badami with a mere 1% margin.
• Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel became the president of the Ahmedabad Municipality after he won by just one vote from Dariapur ward in 1917.
• In the 2017 municipal elections in Mumbai, a candidate from Shiv Sena and a BJP candidate had polled the same number of votes- 5946. Shah won the seat based on a lottery. But had a single person voted in either’s favour, the result could have been different.