High-voltage Assembly Elections, Congress Loses all Five Assembly Seats in Udupi District
Udupi: All three sitting Congress MLAs – Pramod Madhwaraj, Vinay Kumar Sorake and Gopal Poojary – have lost their seats by a high margin. The Assembly results have been a severe setback to the Congress in the district. Previously, the Congress had won three seats (Udupi, Kaup and Byndoor) in the 2013 Assembly elections.
The Kundapur BJP Candidate Halady Srinivas Shetty has won the elections with the highest margin of 56,405 votes in this elections. In 2013 Halady Srinivas Shetty, a three-term BJP MLA who quit the party after being denied the ministerial berth had contested as an independent candidate and won by the highest margin of 40,611 votes in the district. In this election, his winning margin has increased by yet another 15,794 votes.
Halady Srinivas Shetty received 103,434 votes, while his opponent, Congress candidate Rakesh Malli received 47,029 votes.
In the Udupi Assembly constituency, BJP candidate Raghupathi Bhat won by a margin of 12,044 votes. Sitting MLA and Congress candidate Pramod Madhwaraj secured 72,902 votes, while Raghupathi Bhat received 84,946 votes.
BJP candidate B M Sukumar Shetty won from the Byndoor Assembly Constituency defeating his nearest rival Gopal Poojary of the Congress by a margin of 24,393 votes.
In Karkala Assembly constituency, BJP candidate Sunil Kumar defeated Congress candidate Gopal Bhandary by a margin of 42,566 votes. Sunil Kumar received 91,245 votes, while Bhandary got 48,679.
Finally, in the Kaup Assembly Constituency Lalaji R Mendon of BJP defeated the sitting Congress MLA and former minister Vinay Kumar Sorake by a margin of 11,919 votes. Lalaji R Mendon got 75,895 votes while Sorake received 63,976 votes.