BEGALURU: This election saw the lowest Muslim representation in Karnataka Assembly unlike the 2013 Assembly polls where number had gone up to eleven.
Only seven of the Muslim candidates won their seats and incidentally all are from Congress party. Also, five of them had won the 2013 Assembly polls on the party ticket.
Congress, the ruling party in Karnataka fielded 17 Muslim candidates, JD(S) do have Muslim candidates while the saffron party (BJP) does not have a single Muslim candidate.
Among the winners is Kaneez Fatima, the sole Muslim woman won the Gulbarga Uttar constituency by defeating Chandrakant Patil of Bhartiya Janata Party by 5,940 votes. Her husband late Qamar Ul Islam had won the seat in 2013.
Veteran politician Roshan Baig won his stronghold Shivajinagar constituency by defeating BJP leader Katta Subramanya Naidu with a margin over 15,000 votes.
UT Abdul Khader, minister for food, civil supplies and consumer affairs in the Siddaramaiah cabinet, won Mangalore constituency by 19,739 seats, defeating Santosh Kumar Rai Boliyaru of BJP by 19,737 votes. Khader won 80,813 votes while BJP’s Santosh trailed behind with 61,074.
B.Z. Zameer Ahmed Khan, former JD(S) legislator, who defected to Congress in March this year won the Chamrajpet constituency in Bangalore city by beating M Lakshminarayana of BJP with margin of 33,137 votes.
After Aziz Sait’s death, his son Tanveer Sait proved a winning horse for the party. Tanveer won the Narasimharaja constituency defeating BJP’s Sandesh Swamy by 18,127 votes. Sait is the Primary and Secondary Education Minister in the Siddaramaiah cabinet.
Mohammed Nalapad Haris or NA Haris won from Shantinagar seat with margin of 18,205 votes by defeating K Vasudevamurthy.
Rahim Khan has emerged victorious in Bidar assembly constituency with 73270 votes. The 52-year-old incumbent MLA defeated BJP’s Suryakanth Nagmarpalli who got 63025 votes.
Besides these seven winners, nine other Mulsim candidates finished at No. 2 in this poll.
Of the 222 assembly constituencies which went to polls on May 12, the Congress party has won in 78 seats, while the JD-S has won 37 seats. The BJP emerged as the single-largest party with 104 seats.
Interestingly, the Congress polled more votes this time (38 per cent) than in the 2013 assembly election, when got 36.76 per cent votes.