After facing a huge setback in Maharashtra, the victory in Karnataka assembly bypolls proved to be a huge morale booster for BJP as it had won 12 seats out of the total 15 seats. This helped out the four-month-old Yediyurappa government retain majority in the state.

This led to an immediate reaction from the opposition party – Congress as its Legislature Party Leader and former Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and State Congress Chief Dinesh Gundu Rao quit their posts. The Congress party had it on the face of it as they managed to get only 2 seats against the 12 seats in the assembly bypolls, which threw the state unit into a turmoil. The two leaders took charge of the party’s thrashing defeat and rendered their resignations to the Congress President Sonia Gandhi, quoting “unsatisfactory results”.

The assembly elections took place on 5th December. These elections were held to fill the vacancies caused by the disqualification of 17 rebel Congress and JD(S) MLAs whose revolt led to the collapse of the 14-month-old HD Kumaraswamy-led coalition government in July. This further paved way for the BJP to come to power giving them the much needed moral support.

The 12 BJP candidates who won are – Arabail Shivaram Hebbar (Yellapura), Narayana Gowda (K R Pete), B C Patil ( Hirekerur), Shrimant Patil (Kagwad), Mahesh Kumthalli (Athani), K Sudhakar (Chikkaballapura), K Gopalaiah (Mahalakshmi Layout), Anand Singh (Vijayanagara), Ramesh Jarkiholi (Gokak), Arun Kumar Guttur (Ranebennur), S T Somashekar (Yeshwanthpura) and Byrathi Basavaraj (K R Puram).

The two Congress candidates who have won are Rizwan Arshad (Shivajinagar) and H P Manjunath (Hunsur). Independent candidate Sharath Bachegowda, who was expelled from the BJP for anti-party activities after he contested the bypoll as a rebel, won in Hoskote.

Modi referred to the assembly elections of Karnataka as the “extraordinary” one since it had to decide wether the BJP government would stay or not.