By The Editor
The BJP lost Karnataka, the only southern state it ruled, after being soundly defeated by the Congress in 2023 Assembly elections whose results were announced last Saturday. On its own Congress secured 135 seats in a House of 224, which is quite comfortable enough, with BJP managing 66 followed by Janata Dal Secular (JD-S) with 19, Independents 2 and Others 2. The JD-S winning 37 seats in the last Assembly elections in 2018 had this time hoped to be king-maker in a hung Assembly but reduced by nearly half to 19 with its vote share decreasing to 13.32 per cent from 18 per cent in the previous elections. This time the Congress vote share went up by about five per cent to 42.88 from 38 whereas BJP’s vote share decreased marginally from 36.2 per cent to 36 per cent. Party’s humiliating defeat is the second one after Himachal Pradesh in December last year. Congress’ decisive victory can be credited to aggressive campaign spearheaded by mass leader and former chief minister Siddaramaiah and Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) president D.K. Shivakumar. Interestingly, it may be noted that the state has never voted an incumbent party to power since 1985.
Most of the opposition non-BJP parties’ leaders have hailed Congress victory and feel confident of defeating the BJP in the next Lok Sabha elections 2024. Prior to that in the coming few months state assembly elections will be held in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Mizoram and Telengana. Meanwhile, front runners for post of chief minister in Karnataka are Siddaramaiah, who was the chief minister from 2013 to 2018, and D.K.Shivkumar the party’s troubleshooter who won from Kanakapura by over one lakh votes and the All India Congress Committee (AICC) in-charge of Karnataka is Randeep Surjewala. This time the Congress has returned to power on its own in Karnataka after 10 years. Admitting defeat, BJP leader and outgoing Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai said that his party and its cadres have worked very hard. He, however, hopes that Lok Sabha elections next year will be different and for which they will exert their best efforts to reverse the situation in spite of the fact that as many as 14 ministers tasted defeat. The Congress has targeted the BJP on corruption and assured that if they come to power their main agenda will be clean administration and transparency with special thrust on poor people’s programmes.
The Congress gave much credit to the Bharat Jodo Yatra for its success in the Karnataka assembly polls having won 15 of the 20 assembly constituencies in the state the Rahul Gandhi-led foot march passed through. Many also agree that the cross-country march was very popular among the people and this time they really appreciated Rahul Gandhi. It is said that the brains behind Bharat Jodo Yatra’s execution were party general secretary Jairam Ramesh and Digvijaya Singh.