This article exists as part of the online archive for HuffPost India, which closed in 2020. Some features are no longer enabled. If you have questions or concerns about this article, please contact indiasupport@huffpost.com.

'Solid Slap On My Face': Prakash Raj Concedes Defeat In Bangalore Central

The independent candidate suffered a dismal defeat in the constituency.
Hindustan Times via Getty Images

Actor Prakash Raj, who is contesting as an independent candidate, is set to lose from the Bangalore Central constituency in Karnataka in the 2019 Lok Sabha election.

Raj, a vocal critic of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his party, had only got around 26,000 votes in the constituency where BJP’s P. C. Mohan is currently leading.

Congress’s Rizwan Arshad has currently got 4,99,108 votes, while Mohan has 5,46,357.

Mohan had defeated Arshad in 2014 by a margin of 1.37 lakh votes.

Raj left a counting centre midway after learning that he was trailing at number three behind the BJP and the Congress, reported PTI.

He later tweeted, “a SOLID SLAP on my face”.

Raj, who has done many memorable roles in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Hindi movies, has said that he considers neither the BJP nor the Congress to be secular.

He has instead chosen to campaign for other parties like AAP and candidates like Kanhaiya Kumar.

Among his campaign promises are a solution to integrated public transport, affordable housing, model government schools, right to and at work, access to qualitative health and education and legislative measures to ensure social security and equal opportunity to all marginalised groups.

Raj has said many times that the murder of journalist Gauri Lankesh, a close friend, was a turning point for him.

“I was always a guy who questioned, but Gauri’s death changed my perception. When you see people rejoicing at a death, you ask the question why. I felt responsible that we had left her to speak alone,” he told HuffPost India in an interview last year.

Close
This article exists as part of the online archive for HuffPost India, which closed in 2020. Some features are no longer enabled. If you have questions or concerns about this article, please contact indiasupport@huffpost.com.