Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said has said that he lost the Lok Sabha election 34 years ago because of 'fraud'. In 1991 Lok Sabha election Siddaramaiah was the Janata Dal Secular candidate from Koppal in Karnataka. He was up against the incumbent, Basavaraj Patil Anwari, who won the seat in the 1989 election on a JDS ticket and then jumped to the Congress for the 1991 poll. Anwari got 2.41 lakh votes and a victory margin of less than 11,200. Siddaramaiah later filed a case in the Karnataka High Court questioning the counting officials' decision to reject 22,243 votes. He claimed he would have won a majority of those votes. The now-Congress leader also claimed Anwari's candidature was illegal because he had been disqualified from the earlier Lok Sabha by the Speaker on grounds of defection. That, he argued, meant Basavaraj Anwari was "permanently disqualified" from membership of the Lower House. BJP leader Amit Malviya alleged, "This video is proof - the same man who once fought against Congress' 'vote chori' is today their Chief Minister and is leading a 'Vote Adhikar' rally. The irony is so thick... it is not lost on the people of Bharat."
Watch: Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah himself admits he was a victim of “electoral fraud” by the Congress party in the 1991 Koppal Lok Sabha polls. He clearly says he was defeated “ಮೋಸದಿಂದ / Mōsadinda” (by cheating).
— Amit Malviya (@amitmalviya) August 29, 2025
This video is proof—the same man who once fought against Congress’s… https://t.co/Y2cNGS8hPT pic.twitter.com/0Hlkwlm59N
The BJP's R Ashoka, the Leader of the Opposition in the Karnataka Assembly, accused the Congress of having "deceitfully defeated" Siddaramaiah and also dug out another, potentially damaging, statement, this time by former Congress leader CM Ibrahim. Now with the JDS, he had accused the Congress of having 'bought' 3,000 votes for the 2018 Assembly election. The votes, he alleged, were from the Badami seat that Siddaramaiah won.
(State Correspondent)
Dr Mysi Patil





Related Items
Karnataka: 8 workers killed in rock collapse in Bengaluru district
CBI arrests ex-CEOs of 2 Reliance ADA Group firms in loan fraud cases
CM DK Shivkumar announces one more Karnataka Bhavan in Delhi