Janata Dal (S) president HD Deve Gowda, who lost the Tumakuru Lok Sabha seat to BJP candidate GS Basavaraj, has become the third former Prime Minister to face defeat in the Lok Sabha elections. This is the second election wherein HD Deve Gowda has lost after holding the Prime Minister's post.
In the 1999 general elections, Deve Gowda was defeated by Tejaswini Ramesh, the then Congress candidate and now BJP member in the Kanakapura Lok Sabha constituency. This also marked the first election defeat of a strong Vokkaliga leader.
Deve Gowda is the third former Prime Minister to be defeated after Indira Gandhi and Chandrashekar.
In India, most of the Prime Ministers died while in office or after announcing retirement from active politics. Indira Gandhi, Chandrashekar and Deve Gowda, however, tasted defeat in the elections.
In 1977, when Indira Gandhi was defeated by Raj Narain from Rae Bareli, she became the first PM to face an electoral defeat. She later contested from Chikkamagaluru and Rae Bareli, and had a big win from both the seats. In 1983, while she was the Prime Minister, she was assassinated by her bodyguards.
The second non-Congress Prime Minister Chandrashekar too was defeated in the 1984 general elections. This made him the second former Prime Minister to lose in the elections. He lost his own Lok Sabha constituency, Ballia, to Jaganath Chowdhary.
Deve Gowda, to keep his political career alive, had shifted his constituency to Hassan through which he was elected to Parliament four times -- in 2002, 2004, 2009 and 2014.
In 2019, forming a pre-election alliance with Congress, Deve Gowda's candidature was uncertain till the last moment. Many discussions and speculations later, JD(S) supremo voluntarily opted to contest from Tumakuru after leaving Bengaluru North to Congress.