oppn parties Karnataka Elections: Final Assessment

News Snippets

  • SP drops two candidates owing allegiance to Azam Khan from Rampur and Moradabad
  • In Assam, a controversy erupted after a picture of UPPL leader Benjamin Basumatary, lying on a stack of Rs 500 notes circulated on social media. UPPL is an ally of the BJP
  • AAP's Jalandhar-West MP Sushil Kumar Rinku joins the BJP. He was the only AAP Lok Sabha MP
  • Supreme Court dismisses Centre's plea to review its 2023 verdict in the PMLA case
  • Close save for passengers as they remain unhurt after the wings of two planes graze at Kolkata airport. Pilots derostered and inquiry ordered by DGCA
  • Bengal BJP leader Dilip Ghosh gets notice from the EC as well as the BJP for making ugly remarks about Mamata Banerjee's parentage
  • Sadanand Vasanth Date, who faught terrorists in the 26/11 attack and was awarded the Preisent's Police medal, has been appointed the head of the NIA
  • Centre will borrow Rs 7.5L cr in the first six months of FY25, nearly 50% of the target for the full year
  • 25 stocks, including SBI, will see same day trade settlements from today in the world's fastest settlement mode in both BSE and NSE
  • Stocks recover smartly on Wednesday: Sensex rises 526 points to 72996 and Nifty 118 points to 22123
  • Tennis: Rohan Bopanna-Matthew Ebden reached the semifinals of the Miami Open
  • IPL: records tumble as SRH beat MI in a high-scoring match. SRH score 277/3 with 18 sixes and Mumbai score 246 with 20 sixes to fall short by 31 runs. Atotal of 38 sixes, highest in an IPL match were hit and both teams combined to score 523 runs, the highest aggregate in an IPL match
  • Amul will launch fresh milk in the US
  • IPL: RCB beat Punjab by 4 wickets as Kohli and Karthik shine with the bat
  • India strongly objected to German foreign office remarks over the arrest of delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal, called it "biased assumptions"
Delhi Lt Governor Vinai Kumar Saxena says government cannot be run from jail, hints at President's Rule in the capital ////// In a dangerous incident, the wings of two planes grazed while taxiing on the runway at Kolkata airport, all passengers were safe but DGCA ordered an inquiry and the pilots were derostered
oppn parties
Karnataka Elections: Final Assessment

By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2018-05-10 08:49:55

About the Author

Sunil Garodia Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.
With campaigning over, it seems none of the parties or personalities have managed to ignite a spark in the Karnataka elections despite the acrimonious tone of the campaign. This election will go down as the most ‘wave-less’ election ever in recent memory. If there is anti-incumbency against the Congress and Siddaramaiah, it is not overtly visible and neither does it seem that the BJP has majorly capitalized on it. It is also not immediately visible whether PM Modi’s campaigning blitz has swayed a sizeable number of voters towards the BJP. Neither is it visible whether the JD(S) has managed to influence voters with its talk of non-Congress, non-BJP government. With the Lingayats divided over how granting of minority status will benefit the community, it is also not clear which way their votes will go. An added element of mystery was introduced after fake voter cards were discovered in large numbers in the state. Further, it was reported that parties, especially the BJP, was ‘buying’ voters for not voting, something that has never been seen before. Hence, for all analytical purposes, it seems that Karnataka is headed for a hung assembly, as predicted by most opinion polls till now, with a plus-minus variation of 5%.

The stakes are high for all parties. The Congress desperately needs to retain the biggest state it still rules, more so when it means that it will prevent the BJP from expanding its footprint in the south. This is evident from the fact that the party even pressed the ailing Sonia Gandhi to campaign and former PM Manmohan Singh was made to issue scathing criticisms of PM Modi’s choice of words during the campaign and failure of his government at the Centre on two successive days, apart from the time and effort Rahul Gandhi put in the campaign. The BJP knows that Karnataka is the only state in the south where it has the best chance of forming the government, either on its own or in alliance with the JD(S). Hence, it has pulled out all the stops and has poured in money, mobilized workers and has carried out a high-octane campaign with Modi pitching in for many days at the end. The JD(S) knows that it has little chance of forming the government on its own, but it also knows that the way things are going, it will be the kingmaker. Hence, the party is working hard to retain its loyal vote bank and win as many seats as it can so that it can bargain hard with the suitor.

It needs reminding that Siddaramaiah was a Deve Gowda protégé and a JD(S) leader before he left the party to join the Congress in 2006. Hence, a natural enmity can be said to exist between him and Deve Gowda. Still, politics has often thrown up strange bedfellows and it will not be a surprise if they join hands. It all depends on which party manages to emerge on the top and what is the difference in seats between the top two. If the BJP manages to get nearly the same seats that the Congress gets, it is most likely that JD(S) will gravitate towards the party. On the other hand, a JD(S)-Congress alliance is more likely if the Congress gets, say, 100 seats to BJP’s 70 and the JD(S) manages to get 40-50 seats. The only thing that will perhaps prevent the JD(S) from allying with the BJP, despite the mutual admiration society PM Modi and Deve Gowda seem to have formed, is the fact that H D Kumaraswamy, Deve Gowda’s son, will be wary of the party since he burnt his fingers badly when he allied with it in 2004.But Deve Gowda is likely to prevail upon his son to forget the past in the larger interests of the party if the situation demands. So if the Congress does not get more than 95 seats, it is most likely that the BJP-JD(S) combination will form the next government in Karnataka.