By Anand Singh

Bengaluru, May 14 (IANS): Even as former Chief Minister Jagadish Shettar, who switched to Congress ahead of the assembly polls in Karnataka, lost to the BJP's Mahesh Tenginkai by a huge margin, both the leaders jointly got 97 per cent votes from Hubballi-Dharwad Central assembly seat.

Shettar, a six-term MLA from Hubballi-Dharwad Central, had left the BJP and joined Congress after he was denied a seat by the party national leadership. The constituency is considered a stronghold of the BJP.

Shettar got 60,355 votes, which is 37.89 per cent votes as compared to 94,408 for BJP's Tenginkai, which is 59.27 per cent votes polled.

Jointly, they got 97.16 per cent of votes polled in the assembly seat.

The JD-S candidate managed to get only 513 votes, which is 0.32 per cent of votes.

Meanwhile, 1,251 voters opted for NOTA, which is 0.78 per cent of the total votes polled in the assembly.

A total of 16 candidates had contested for Hubballi-Dharwad Central seat.

In the 2018 elections, Shettar won this constituency by a margin of 21,306 votes.

It may be recalled it was Hubballi where Jana Sangh had scored its first victory in South India when the seat was won by Jagadish Shettar's uncle Sadashiva Shettar in 1968.

Even former Congress president Sonia Gandhi had campaigned for Shettar from Hubballi on May 6, her first electoral public meeting after a gap of over 4 years.

The Congress won 135 out of 224 seats in the southern state, whereas the BJP had won 66, the JD-S 19 seats in the state where the polling was done on May 10.