Karnataka elections: Bagepalli Assembly constituency

Bagepalli assembly constituency is located in Chikballapur district neighbouring Bengaluru. The region is just below the southern border of the Rayalaseema in Andhra Pradesh. It is semi-arid and drought prone with 535 mm of erratic and spatial rainfall.

The dust brown rocky terrain is severely undulating, with small hill ranges and outcrops that stud the topography. There is no mineral wealth and only a very thin and fragile soil cover.

Hardly 5 per cent of the cropped lands are irrigated by an age old network of rain-fed tanks, each irrigating 2 to 10 hectares of wet land. The low water table is tapped through bore-wells drilled to more than 100 meters depth.

Agriculture is still the backbone of Bagepalli. Groundnuts are grown on these dry lands, inter-cropped with red gram, cowpea, field beans, green gram, jowar, maize and castor on the field bunds. Irrigated groundnut, mulberry, onions and sunflower are the common bore-well irrigated crops. Ragi and a coarse variety of paddy are cultivated under irrigation tanks. Every fifth or sixth year is a drought, followed by near famine conditions.

Independent candidate, SN Subbareddy is the current legislator from Bagepalli, he defeated Sriramareddy G V of CPM.

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