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Journalism of Courage
The ruling Congress party in Karnataka suffered a major setback on Tuesday after it failed to defeat the BJP in civic polls for the Bengaluru city council. The BJP, however, could not wrest complete control of the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagar Palike (BBMP) as it fell marginally short of a clear majority in the 198 member council.
The BJP, which ruled the council for the last five years after winning 110 seats in the 2009 BBMP polls, won in 100 wards in the 2015 elections — falling short of the simple majority mark of 103.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted thanking the voters of the city for the support given to the BJP.
While the Congress was tipped to win the elections narrowly since local polls tend to go the way of the party in power in the state, it only managed to improve its BBMP council numbers from 58 (2009) to 76 in the current elections.
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The party’s hopes to cash in on anti-incumbency and to benefit from a low voter turnout — 49 per cent — fell flat as the results were declared.
Hailing the victory as people’s mandate against Congress’s “negative politics”, BJP national president Amit Shah said: “This is a victory for our ideology of sabka saath, sabka vikas (development for all).”
Interestingly, the Congress campaign was led by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah himself, who extensively toured the city asking voters to back the party.
The Congress was widely perceived to have paid the price for delaying the launch of its campaign and dilly-dallying too long over the idea of splitting Bengaluru into smaller units.
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