In Dharwad roiled by a murder, Pralhad Joshi eyes fifth term amid Lingayat rumblings, ‘anti-incumbency’

The Lingayat-dominated Dharwad Lok Sabha constituency is one of the BJP’s strongholds in north Karnataka, from where Union minister Pralhad Joshi, has been winning since 2004 for four consecutive terms.

This time, amid a perceived anti-incumbency, Joshi, 61, is also facing a challenge from a section of the Lingayat community, even as he is mainly banking on his grip over the constituency and the Narendra Modi factor to see him through.

Joshi is pitted against the Congress’s Vinod Asooti, a 34-year-old OBC leader. The Congress has fielded a non-Lingayat candidate in Dharwad for the first time since 1998, when it had put up Dyamappa Kallappa Naikar.

The situation in the constituency took a turn after April 18 when the daughter of the Hubballi-Dharwad Municipal Corporation’s Congress councillor Niranjan Hiremath, Neha Hiremath, a 23-year-old MCA student, was stabbed to death on her college campus, allegedly by her former classmate Fayaz Khondunaik, 23, who was arrested after the incident.

In its campaign since, the BJP has been raking up this incident as a case of “love jihad”. The

hoardings of Neha, seeking “justice” for her, have been put up on all the key roads and junctions of the Hubballi-Dharwad belt.

Top BJP leaders, including Union Home Minister Amit Shah and party national president J P Nadda besides Joshi, have visited Hiremath’s residence, even as senior Congress leaders, including Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, have also met the family.

The Congress government, while ordering a CID probe into the incident, has said the murder was over “personal matters”. The Dharwad-based Muslim organisation Anjuman-e-Islam, which has also held protests to seek justice for Neha, has downplayed the “love jihad” allegation.

A resident of