Chikmagalur, May 13 (PTI) BJP national general secretary and four-time Karnataka legislator C T Ravi on Saturday lost the Chikmagalur seat to former party colleague H D Thammaiah, who crossed over to the Congress in February, by a margin of 5,926 votes.

Before joining the Congress, Thammaiah was Chikmagalur constituency's district convenor of the BJP and a close aide of Ravi.

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Ravi, who belongs to the Vokkaliga community, got 79,128 votes, while Thammaiah bagged 85,054 votes. JD(S) candidate B M Thimma Shetty was in the third place with 1,763 votes.

A former student leader of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), Ravi had won the 2018 Assembly election by defeating Shankar B L of the Congress by a margin of 26,314 votes. He rose through the ranks of the BJP to become an MLA from Chikmagalur.

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He was a minister in the BS Yediyurappa government when BJP national chief JP Nadda asked him to work for the party. Ravi accepted the new role and resigned from the cabinet in 2020.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)