Hegde wins Uttara Kannada seat with comfortable margin

BJP leader Ananth Kumar Hegde, known for making controversial remarks, won the Uttara (North) Kannada seat in Karnataka, defeating his nearest rival Anand Asnotikar of the Janata Dal (Secular) by a margin of 4.79 lakh votes, according to Lok Sabha election results declared Thursday.

Hegde held the portfolio of junior minister in the Skill Development and Entrepreneurship Ministry during Narendra Modi's first term as prime minister.

Twenty eight Lok Sabha constituencies in Karnataka had gone to polls in two phases.

Hegde stoked a controversy recently by calling Congress president Rahul Gandhi a "moron" for his tweet that 'Modilies' is a new word in the English dictionary.

Amid reports of his controversial remarks on Twitter about Nathuram Godse, Hegde claimed his account was "hacked". He, however, said there was no question of justifying Mahatma Gandhi's killing.

Before that, Hegde had called Gandhi a "hybrid breed", wondering how can the son of a 'Muslim' father and a Christian mother be a Brahmin.

"...They have no sense about religion. See how much they lie, father is a Muslim, mother a Christian, son is Brahmin. How did it come?" he had said at an event in Uttara Kannada district.

"You cannot get such hybrid breed in any laboratory in the world, it is available in our country's Congress laboratory only," he had said, attacking Gandhi.