 "May 8 could bring relief to battered Congress")
Voting ended today for elections to the Karnataka Assembly which represented the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s in South India. If on May 8, the day of counting, the ruling BJP is ousted by the Congress, as is widely expected, this will mean a big shot in the arm for the beleagured Congress buffetted by charges of corruption.
The result of the assembly election cannot be extrapolated in the Lok Sabha, but Karnataka has 28 Lok Sabha seats and the maximum that the BJP has ever won is 19, in 2009. This has implications for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
The election will settle the fate of former Chief Minister BS Yeddyurappa who split from the BJP to form his own party the Karnataka Janata Party (KJP), the leader of the Janta Dal (Secular), HD Deve Gowda and his son HD Kumaraswamy, the might of the Bellary mining families led by the Lad brothers and the Reddy brothers and the BJP itself.
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Congress leaders say their assessment is that they are heading towards a simple majority and will be able to form a government on their own.
Karnataka comprises several regions. In most of the 12 districts in north Karnataka, which sends 90 representatives to the assembly, it is a three-way battle among the BJP, the Congress and the KJP.
For 88 seats in 11 districts in south Karnataka, including 28 seats in Bangalore urban district, the main contenders are the Congress and the JD-S, as the BJP is weak in this region, except Bangalore urban.
It is a straight fight between the BJP and the Congress in the three costal districts of Dakshina Kannada, Udupi and Uttara Kannada, which together have 19 seats.
In the four districts in central Karnataka, the BJP and the Congress are the major contenders for the 26 seats.
In 2008, the BJP emerged the single largest party despite garnering only 33.93 per cent of the vote share against 35.13 per cent for the Congress. A marginal shift in the vote share away from the BJP is expected to give the Congress a victory.
The seeds of the BJP’s defeat lie in the split in the votes of the Lingayat caste, sought both by Yeddyurappa and the BJP. The Mumbai-Karnataka region which is the Lingayat belt, also Yeddyurappa’s stronghold, contributes 33 seats to the 224-member assembly. In the outgoing Assembly, 23 of these 33 seats were represented by BJP MLAs. With a split in the Lingayat votes between BJP and Yeddyurappa’s Karnataka Janata Pakshe, the Congress is expected to do much better in this region this time.