Rajashekhar Basavaraj Hitnal To Run On INC Ticket From Koppal
Congress has nominated Rajashekhar Basavaraj Hitnal from Koppal to run for the Lok Sabha elections to be held on May 7, 2024, in the constituency. The Congress candidate Rajashekhar Basavaraj Hital from Koppal, Karnataka declared his educational qualification as 12th and profession as business and agriculture.
Koppal with a total population of approximately 22 lakh includes 15 lakh voters and comprises 8 assembly segments including Sindhanur, Maski, Kushtagi, Kanakgiri, Gangavati, Yelburga, Koppal, and Siruguppa. The Congress party has dominated the seat winning 10 out of 16 elections held till 2014. BJP registered its first victory here in 2009 when Shivaramagouda was elected from Koppal. In the last two general elections, BJP candidate Karadi Sanganna Amarappa secured a win from here defeating the Congress candidate K Rajashekar Basavaraj with a slight margin.
In the last assembly elections in 2023, 6 out of 8 assembly seats were won by the INC and 2 by the BJP. In the last Lok Sabha elections, BJP candidate Karadi Sangana Amarappa won 49.25 percent of the votes in the constituency while INC received 46.10 votes. It is a general category seat with 56.33 percent literacy. The proportion of SC, ST, and Muslim population here is 19.47%, 14.43% and 12.44% respectively.
Notably, Lingayats are a dominant forward community in the constituency along with an OBC community Kuruba. According to the political analysts, similar to the past years the fight here is against the forward and backward communities as Hitnal belongs to Kuruba and Amarappa to the Lingayat community. Since 1980 when an OBC candidate H.G Ramulu emerged victorious here, Congress has been fielding the OBC candidate in Koppal.
Draught is one of the major issues faced by the people in the rice bowl constituency along with the silting in the reservoir which obstructs the free flow of water in the canals. Consistency has remained backward in the development indices, with few facilities for higher education and poor nutrition. Rural-to-urban migration is still a problem in Koppal.
