Cong leads in LS by-polls in Karnataka

Ruling Congress party candidates today surged ahead of JDS rivals maintaining good leads in their opponent's stronghold in the prestigious bypolls for the Mandya and Bangalore rural Lok Sabha seats.

Multi-lingual actress and Congress candidate Ramya was ahead with 33,000 votes over her rival C S Puttaraju of JDS in the Vokkaliga heartland of Mandya.

In Bangalore rural, D K Suresh of Congress had established a lead of over 42,000 votes against JDS' Anita Kumaraswamy, wife of former Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy, who had won the seat in the last Lok Sabha poll before resigning after his election as an MLA in the May Assembly polls.

Both Ramya, making her electoral debut, and Suresh have been maintaining comfortable margin, as counting of votes was taken up this morning.

The by-polls had been turned into a prestigious battle between the Congress which swept to power in the May Assembly polls and JDS.

The BJP had backed JDS candidates in the two segments. The by-poll to Mandya was necessitated following the resignation of N Cheluvarayaswamy after he became MLA.

Suresh is the brother of senior Congress leader and MLA D K Shivakumar.

Mandya is a bastion of JDS, which won five of the eight Assembly seats in the district in the May elections.

In Bangalore rural, where Kumaraswamy had won by 1.3 lakh votes in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, the Congress has secured the support of Samajwadi Party MLA, C P Yogeeshwara, who had defeated Anita Kumaraswamy in the May polls.