The Congress party made a significant comeback in the Hassan Lok Sabha constituency by winning the 2024 election through its candidate Shreyas Patel, grandson of former Lok Sabha member G. Puttaswamy Gowda. Shreyas defeated his nearest rival, incumbent Lok Sabha member Prajwal Revanna, who was a consensus nominee of Janata Dal Secular (JDS) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Prajwal, currently in the custody of the Special Investigation Team (SIT) under the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) for rape and sexual exploitation charges, received 6,26,536 votes, while Shreyas secured 6,70,274 votes, winning by a margin of 43,738 votes.
The Congress party last won the Hassan Lok Sabha seat in 1999 when G. Puttaswamy Gowda defeated former Prime Minister H.D. Devegowda of JDS. H.D. Devegowda retained the seat in the 2004, 2009, and 2014 elections as a JDS nominee. In 2019, he made way for his grandson Prajwal Revanna to contest from Hassan, while Devegowda moved to the Tumakuru Lok Sabha seat, where he lost to BJP nominee Basavaraju.
Shreyas Patel, a former Zilla Panchayat member in Hassan, had previously contested the Holenarsipura assembly seat in the 2023 election but was narrowly defeated by JDS nominee and former minister H.D. Revanna, Prajwal Revanna’s father, by about 2,500 votes. The political rivalry between the families of Devegowda and Puttaswamy Gowda dates back to 1985 in the Holenarsipura assembly seat.
In Hassan, sources alleged that BJP workers might not have fully supported the JDS-BJP consensus nominee, which contributed to the Congress candidate’s victory. Congress workers celebrated Shreyas Patel’s success by bursting crackers at Mahatma Gandhi Circle in Holenarispur town.