BJP retains hold in Karnataka, Congress slips

Bangalore, May 16 (IANS) The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Saturday retained its stronghold in Karnataka by winning 19 of the 28 Lok Sabha constituencies in the state, one more than what it had secured in the 2004 general elections.

A brief analysis of the results, declared by the election authorities here after the counting of votes were completed in all constituencies by 5 p.

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m., show that the Congress suffered a setback by managing to win six as against the eight it had in the previous elections.

A resurgent Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S), on the other hand, bagged three seats, one more than it had last time.

The BJP, which stormed to power in the southern state for the first time in May 2008 assembly elections, not only retained 14 seats but also wrested four, including three -Raichur (Scheduled Tribe or ST), Koppal and Chitradurga (Scheduled Caste or SC) - from the Congress and one from the Samajwadi Party.

The ruling BJP, however, lost Mysore to the Congress.

The beleaguered Congress managed to retain Gulbarga (SC), Bidar, Chikkaballapur and Kolar (SC) and wrest Chamarajanagar from the JD-S.

As a regional party and a constituent of the Third Front, the JD-S retained Hassan and wrested Mandya and Bangalore Rural from the Congress.

The BJP also managed to retain its hold in Haveri, carved out of Dharward South and Dharwad North and Udupi-Chikmagalur that was combined when the parliamentary constituencies were redrawn as part of the delimitation exercise.