The Virajpet constituency has delivered a surprise win for the Congress, as AS Ponnanna defeated the BJP's K G Bopaiah by a margin of 4,291 votes. Ponnanna secured the seat with a total of 83,791 votes, while Bopaiah received a total of 79,500 votes. The JDS' Mansoor Khan, on the other hand, only managed to secure a total of 1,121 votes.

Virajpet, located in the Kodagu district of Karnataka state, witnessed a high voter turnout of 74.07 percent in the 2023 Karnataka Assembly elections. Out of the total 2,13,294 voters in the Virajpet Assembly constituency, 1,07,208 are men, 106,076 women, and 10 transgender voters.

The Virajpet assembly constituency falls under the Mysuru Lok Sabha constituency. The voting for the constituency was held on May 10, along with the other 223 constituencies in Karnataka. The winning party must have a minimum of 113 seats to form the government in Karnataka out of the total 224 seats.

The main contestants from the Virajpet Assembly constituency are Mansoor Khan from JD(S), AS Ponnanna from INC, and K G Bopaiah from BJP.

In 2018, Bopaiah won the seat by defeating Arun Machaiah CS of the INC with a margin of 13353 votes.

The fate of the candidates for the 2023 election will be decided on Saturday, May 13. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Bharatiya Janata Party candidate Prathap Simha won from the Mysuru Lok Sabha (MP) seat with a margin of 1,38,647 votes by defeating CH Vijayashankar of the Indian National Congress.

First Published:May 12, 2023 4:18 PM IST