By IANS
Bangalore : The opposition Congress Tuesday retained the Ullal assembly constituency in coastal Karnataka by defeating the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) by 8,032 votes in the by-election held Saturday.
According to the State Election Commission, Congress' U.T. Khader polled 46,271 votes while his nearest rival and BJP candidate Chandrashekar Uchil secured 38,239 votes.
Ruling Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) nominee Aboobacker Natekal and Communist Party of India-Marxist's (CPI-M) Balakrishna Shetty forfeited their deposits by securing 6,217 and 4,803 votes respectively in an electorate of 155,200.
The JD-S, which had entered the minority-dominated Ullal contest belatedly to make a dent into the Congress stronghold, failed to help its coalition partner BJP in wresting the seat.
The lone independent candidate in the fray, Bharathraj Shetty, polled only 1,796 votes.
The by-election was necessitated by the death of Khader's father and Congress legislator U.T. Farheed in February.
Though Uchil was ahead of Khader in the first five rounds of counting, the latter surged ahead from the sixth round onwards to maintain the lead and emerge victorious by the end of the 14th round.
This is the second time that Uchil lost to the Congress in Ullal. In the 2004 election, he lost to Fareed by about 7,000 votes.