Bengaluru: Ruling Congress candidate Samarth Mallikarjun on Monday won the Davanagere South assembly seat, for which bypolls were held on April 9, by a margin of 5,708 votes, the Election Commission said.

He was initially trailing.

In Bagalkot, the other constituency where bypolls were held, Congress candidate Umesh Meti has already registered a victory, defeating BJP’s Veerabhadrayya Charantimath — a former MLA — by a margin of 22,332 votes.

The polls were necessitated by the deaths of senior Congress MLAs H Y Meti (Bagalkot) and Shamanur Shivashankarappa (Davanagere South).

Samarth Mallikarjun, who is Shivashankarappa’s grandson, secured 69,578 votes, while BJP’s Srinivasa T Dasakariyappa, a fresh face, secured 63,870 votes.

In the 2023 Assembly elections, H Y Meti defeated BJP’s Charantimath by a margin of 5,878 votes in Bagalkot, while Shivashankarappa defeated BJP’s B G Ajay Kumar by 27,888 votes in Davanagere South.