Bangalore, May 9: When former Karnataka chief minister H.D. Kumaraswamy arrived outside Kanakapura town, 55 km from Bangalore, on the penultimate day of election campaigning on Thursday, he was a good seven hours late. For a rally that was scheduled at 11 a.m., Kumaraswamy’s cavalcade drove in at 6 p.m.

That did not stop a surging crowd of Kumaraswamy’s supporters in this Vokkaliga belt from laying siege to his open top election campaign vehicle at the town’s entrance. Neither did it break the patience of a crowd of nearly 10,000 people who had waited all day at the local school grounds for the arrival of “Kumaranna (Kumar brother)”.

Through the day, rumours had gone round that Kumaraswamy would not come to Kanakapura—a part of the parliamentary constituency where his father former prime minister H.D. Devegowda was defeated in 2004, a constituency that has given rise to a bitter but now seemingly softened rivalry between his family and that of another Vokkaliga leader, D.K. Shivakumar from the Congress.

But as the campaign vehicle inched through the narrow main road, Kumaraswamy seemed to belong to the place. Hundreds of people from the villages around the area’s lifeline, the Cauvery river, milled around to catch a glimpse of the JD(S) leader. Firecrackers exploded, flowers poured down from the rooftops and party workers shouted “Kumaranna is a super star” as the bus made its way to the centre of town.

The events at the riverside town of Kanakapura, which neighbours Kumaraswamy’s constituency of Ramanagara, was only a re-enactment of what he had been witnessing during all his campaigns for the first phase of the polls.

“Everywhere I go, large crowds gather. Irrespective of what others say, people have decided to support me,” Kumaraswamy said at the Kanakapura meeting.

“I heard only 6,000 people participated when Sonia Gandhi was in Tumkur. Even the BJP rallies of Advani, Rajnath Singh and Modi have had only 2,000-3,000 people attending. I have had more numbers,” says Kumaraswamy who was shown as the most popular choice for CM by a pre-poll survey despite the JD(S) losing big ground.

Leaving his own constituency Ramanagara in the hands of his wife, the family stronghold of Hassan and Bangalore City to his father and brother H.D. Revanna, Kumaraswamy has travelled across districts around Bangalore.

The former chief minister who recently recovered from a heart surgery has let his work do the talking in his own constituency, sparing barely three days for his own campaign. Even on the last day for campaign on May 8, he spent little time in Ramanagara.

“Kumaraswamy did not come to our village himself. His wife did. We have seen what they have done in Ramanagara—they have cemented roads in every village and water. We want it for our village too,” said Chikannaiah, a ragi farmer from Gottigehalli in the Maralwadi area that was recently added to Ramanagara.

Pitted against a woman candidate, former chief minister Ramakrishna Hegde’s daughter Mamatha Nichani, Kumaraswamy is supremely confident he will win by 20,000 votes from the silk weaving Ramanagara region.

Kumaraswamy has also brought investments worth over Rs 10,000 crore for his constituency, including a high profile DLF township project.

“When Kumaraswamy’s wife came, she was like any other woman from our village. The Congress candidate is like an outsider,” says Susheela, a resident of Harohalli village, another newly added segment to Ramanagara.

With few big names, excepting Congress leader S.M. Krishna—a Vokkaliga leader—campaigning for her, Mamatha Nichani is expected to struggle in the polls alongside the BJP candidate Rudresh Gowda, believed to enjoy the support of Bangalore Mysore Infrastructure Corridor Project officials.