The Congress managers are pitching for a clear majority as they want to avoid a hung assembly, and don’t want to give the BJP a chance to poach its lawmakers, as in 2019. The BJP, which is facing a rebellion from within, has its task cut out. A report by Amit Agnihotri
The May 10 Karnataka assembly polls are being watched with interest across the country as the outcome on May 13 would not only impact on state politics, it will have a bearing on the Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Telangana elections to be held later this year.
The polls for the 224 assembly seats in Karnataka are being tightly contested between two national parties, the BJP and the Congress, as well as the regional party, Janata Dal-Secular which has a significant presence.
The Congress is bullish on its campaign and is claiming that it will get a comfortable majority to allow the grand old party to form a government of its own. The Congress managers are pitching for a clear majority as they want to avoid a hung assembly, as it happened in 2018, and don’t want to give the BJP a chance to poach its lawmakers, as in 2019.
In the 2018 assembly polls, the Congress had more seats (80) than the JD-S (37) but still offered the chief minister’s post to HD Kumaraswamy to keep the BJP (104) out of power.
The JD-S-Congress alliance was going fine till 2019 when the BJP came to power through a backdoor by defeating the HD Kumaraswamy government in a trust vote by poaching 17 Congress lawmakers.
If the Congress is able to wrest Karnataka from the BJP, it will be a booster for the grand old party in south India as well as in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, where the grand old party will directly fight the saffron party later this year.
The coming polls in the Hindi-speaking states will be considered a semi-final ahead of the 2024 national elections in which the Congress hopes to forge an anti-BJP front.
The Karnataka result will also have a spill-over effect in neighbouring Telangana where the coming contest will be between the ruling Bharat Rashtra Samithi, Congress and BJP, which is trying to gain a foothold in the southern state.
Rahul Gandhi has given a target of 150 seats to the Karnataka Congress which is trying its best to achieve that goal. Rahul, party president Mallikarjun Kharge and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra are campaigning in the state besides the state leaders. They are alleging that the double engine government has failed in the state.
