Campaigning for first phase of polling ends

MANDATE 2004/ Electioneering ends in 140 constituencies in 14 states

As campaigning ended at 5 pm yesterday for the Assembly and Lok Sabha elections in Bangalore and some adjoining areas, the city's night life ground to a temporary halt, although extremely reluctantly.

'No Booze Here Today' screamed a handwritten sign tacked on the door of one of the city's snazzier pubs, adding, 'But the good times will roll again on the 21st'.

In the first phase of polls on Tuesday, 15 out of the 28 Lok Sabha constituencies in Karnataka and 120 out of the 224 Assembly constituencies in the state will go to polls.

Simultaneously, campaigning for the April 20 elections ended in all the 26 constituencies of Gujarat, 24 out of 48 in Maharashtra, 21 out of 42 in Andhra pradesh, 11 each in Bihar, Orissa and Chhattisgarh, six each in Assam and Jharkhand, two each in Jammu and Kashmir and Meghalaya and one each in Manipur, Mizoram, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Daman and Diu and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

Also, polls will be held in 147 of the 294 Assembly constituencies in Andhra Pradesh and 77 of the 147 seats in Orissa. All in al, meetings and rallies came to a close in 140 constituencies in 14 states.

If Saturday night saw pubs and discos spilling over with young people, Sunday night was about listless waiters, empty restaurants and closed doors. But there was more excitement over Rahul Dravid and Anil Kumble returning home than about who would be the next chief minister.

Winning the Karnataka state elections has been the BJP's pet project for close to 10 years. The state sent a huge number of kar sevaks to Ayodhya in 1992, when the Babri mosque was demolished. Many of them came from the Hubli Dharwad area of north Karnataka, where communal feelings run high.

Although the party has seen a big increase in its base, the number of seats "" both in the Assembly and the Lok Sabha "" it has been able to win has increased steadily, but not in proportion to the growth in its base.

Also, more people have walked out of the party here than in any other state. Beginning with the chief of the state unit of the party, AK Subbiah who left the party in the 1980s, to Vijay Sankeshwar, sitting MP in the last Lok Sabha, who resigned his seat and left, there has been a perennial tug of war in the BJP leadership here.