Deve Gowda, Kharge trail in Karnataka

Former Prime Minister and Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) candidate H.D. Deve Gowda and Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge were on Thursday trailing behind their BJP rivals in the Tumkur and Gulbarga (SC) Lok Sabha constituencies in Karnataka.

According to the latest vote count trends, Gowda was trailing behind the Bharatiya Janata Party's G.S. Basavraj by 22,925 votes after four rounds of vote count in the prestigious Tumkur parliamentary seat, about 70 km from Bengaluru.

Gowda polled 1,27,810 votes and Basavaraj 1,40,735 votes.

Similarly, Kharge is trailing behind BJP's Umesh Jadav by 9,173 votes after the first round of counting in the Gulbarga reserved seat, about 610 km away from Bengaluru.

Kharge polled 25,753 votes and Jadav 34,920 votes.

Gowda opted to contest from Tumkur, paving the way for his grandson Prajwal Revenna to enter the fray from the adjacent Hassan seat, which is the traditional bastion of the JD-S and the Gowda clan.

Kharge contested for the third consecutive time from Gulbarga.

--IANS

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