Siddaramaiah won from Varuna, becomes MLA for 9th time

Senior Congress leader and former chief minister Siddaramaiah on Saturday got a landslide victory in the Varuna constituency, defeating his nearest rival by a margin of 46,006 votes and entering the Karnataka Assembly for the ninth time. The 75-year-old leader got 1,19,430 votes against 73,424 polled by his BJP rival and influential Lingayat leader V Somanna. The Bahujan Samaj Party candidate was in third place with 1,075 votes, according to the Election Commission website. Five-time MLA and outgoing state Housing Minister Somanna was moved out of his Govindaraj Nagar constituency in Bengaluru for the first time to take the Congress strongman head-on in his home turf.In 2008, he shifted to Varuna which is also in the Mysuru region, and registered an easy victory that he repeated in 2013.