Karnataka Election Results 2023 Live: Beyond numbers and percentages, make sense of the results with our real-time analysis.Karnataka Assembly Election Results 2023 Analysis: The Congress successfully staged a comeback in Karnataka by winning 136 seats and a 43% vote share in the Karnataka Assembly elections, results of which were declared on Saturday (May 13). Now, all eyes are on who will secure the Chief Minister post: former CM Siddaramaiah or state Congress chief D K Shivakumar.
The party held a meeting of its new legislature members today. The meeting passed two resolutions – the first one thanked all the party leaders and workers for ‘stellar work’ in ensuring protection of Karnataka and democracy while the second authorised the AICC president to appoint the Congress Legislature Party (CLP) leader. While the first was moved by D K Shivakumar, Siddaramaiah moved the second.
The CLP meeting is likely to decide on a leader for the legislature party who would become the new CM. Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on Saturday indicated that the new government in Karnataka will get a shared tenure under the two contenders. “People have decided that they have had enough of turning to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and will look at the people of Karnataka. We will form the government under the leadership of Siddaramaiah and D K Shivakumar. We have a lot of responsibility now. It is on them as well,” Kharge said at a media briefing.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi during the campaigns in Karnataka ahead of the Assembly elections (Express Photo)
In a decisive verdict such as the one in Karnataka, there is a risk of over-reading both the defeat and the victory. There is a danger, too, amid the headline changes, of missing the important fine print.
There will be chatter in coming days about why the Congress won, and many are already pointing to a large-scale shift of the “Lingayat vote” from the BJP. In the run-up to the election, this was seen to be spurred by the sidelining of BS Yediyurappa and the cross-over in North Karnataka of heavyweight Lingayat leaders to the Congress from the BJP, like Jagadish Shettar, six-term MLA and former Chief Minister.
As it turns out, Shettar himself has punctured, or at least complicated this narrative, by losing by a considerable margin in Hubli-Dharwad to the BJP candidate, party state general secretary Mahesh Tenginkai — both Shettar and Tenginkai share the same caste and sub-caste, they are Banajiga Lingayats, and Tenginkai is known in these parts as Shettar’s disciple or “shishya”. Read here
Congress leader Siddaramaiah moved a single-line resolution that authorised AICC President to appoint the new leader of the Congress Legislature Party (CLP). 135 MLAs endorsed the same.
The process of taking opinion of individual legislators will be done today itself, says AICC general secretary KC Venugopal.
The Congress party has emerged as the winner in the 2023 Karnataka Legislative Assembly elections, with results on Saturday (May 14) showing a decisive haul of 135 seats in the 224-seat Assembly, comfortably past the majority mark of 113.
Political analysts believe that one reason why India’s grand old party, which has not been in top form in recent elections, scored a win here was because of a deliberate focus on local leadership and issues. Rather than national figures such as Rahul Gandhi, two veteran state leaders were largely the faces of the campaign – former Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee head DK Shivakumar.
This has also meant that a Chief Ministerial face was never projected by the party, and any news of infighting or rivalry was smoothened with the two leaders participating together during campaigning. Party president Mallikarjun Kharge has hinted there may be a setup where each leader is at the helm for two-and-a-half years each, out of the five-year term.
Here’s a brief look at how the two rose to power.
'By the historical verdict of 13th of May, 2023; Karnataka has once again shone a new light to democracy and protecting the Constitution, which are under attack from the forces of hate and divisiveness, both from inside and outside the State', reads the Congress Legislature Party meet's resolution.
The party extended its gratitude to leaders like Mallikarjun Kharge, Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra. The party, in its statement, said that the Congress campaign 'in its true earnestness' began during the Bharat Jodo Yatra last year.
The party also went on to thank all the party workers who worked hard to 'challenge the corruption, the scams, the injustice and inequality perpetuated by the BJP Government'.
'The victory of the people of Karnataka in this Assembly election is in many ways a true celebration of the Gandhian and the Congress ideology that lights the heart and soul of every Congress worker and leader', the resolution read.
The much-anticipated Congress Legislature Party meeting has started at Shangri La Hotel in Benglauru. What is the meeting all about? Read here
As the race for the chief ministership of Karnataka hotted up between Siddaramaiah and D K Shivakumar, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on Sunday rushed back to Delhi and said the AICC observers will convey the opinion of the party's MLAs to the high command which will then take a final decision.
He also asserted that everything has gone smoothly for the party in the assembly polls and the government will be formed as soon as possible.
The newly elected assembly in Karnataka has to be put in place as the term of the previous assembly expires on May 24. This means the swearing-in of the new chief minister and his ministers has to take place a few days before that. (PTI)
New Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Director Praveen Sood found himself in the middle of a controversy in 2017 when six months after his appointment as the Bengaluru city police commissioner he was transferred after then Chief Minister Siddaramaiah is said to have received several complaints against him.
Six years later, as the Director General of Police (DGP), Sood faced flak from Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) president D K Shivakumar in March. Accusing the state police of filing cases against Congress workers and turning a blind eye towards the BJP, Shivakumar warned that the Congress would take action against Sood if it returns to power. He also labelled him an “agent of the BJP”. Kiran Parashar writes
Prominent Vokkaliga pontiff of Adi Chunchanagiri Nirmalananda Natha Swamiji on Sunday appealed to the Congress leadership to appoint Karnataka party unit president D K Shivakumar as the next chief minister of the state. (PTI)
The BJP, which witnessed defeat in the Karnataka Assembly polls, failed to win even a single seat reserved for the Scheduled Tribe (ST) category.
Besides, the party also lost in 24 constituencies out of 36 reserved for the Scheduled Caste (SC) candidates.
Karnataka has 51 reserved constituencies, out of which 36 seats are reserved for SC candidates and 15 for candidates belonging to the ST community. (PTI)
Congress party leaders arrived at the hotel in Bengaluru for the CLP meeting on Sunday.
Ahead of the Congress meet that is likely to decide the next Karnataka Chief Minister, supporters of the party chief D K Shivakumar gathered outside his residence.
For more than two decades, Ramanagara politics used to be dominated by the Deve Gowda family. However, cut to 2023, Congressman Iqbal Hussain breached the ‘Vokkaliga fort’ by defeating Janata Dal (Secular) candidate Nikhil Kumaraswamy by 10,715 votes.
The Ramanagara seat was a tight contest between the two with Nikhil Kumaraswamy sweeping the rural belt of Ramanagara, while the Congress made huge gains in the town region of Ramanagara. In fact, the town – which consists of a sizable Muslim population – gave Hussain a lead of over 16,000, propelling the Congress candidate to victory.
However, Hussain is quick to attribute his electoral success to the teachings of DK brothers – DK Shivakumar and DK Suresh – who were with him throughout the campaign strategy process. Read what he says
The mandate given by the people of Karnataka in the just-concluded elections gives us hope for many reasons. Most importantly, it tells us that there is a complex and unbreakable network of associations between people who have lived together for long periods of time and shared geographical and cultural spaces.
A political party might attempt to re-organise these densely complex social networks and divide and reshape social communities in keeping with its political ideology. But however persuasive the speeches of political demagogues and brutal the use of the state machinery; however strong the prejudices and self-interests of certain groups of people, these bonds cannot be completely severed. And when a political party, for the purpose of consolidating its political power, tries to break these networks of relationships established through cultural intersections, shared knowledge, conduits of trade and commerce and the affections of friendships and neighbourliness, it can only go so far.
When the people realise that those who claim to be their protectors and leaders are, in actuality, splintering the finely patterned, delicately beautiful, mosaic of a multi-cultural, multi-religious, multi-linguistic, community living, there will be a backlash. The Karnataka election results indicate one such mighty backlash. Parinitha Shetty writes
The Congress on Sunday alleged that the BJP was not able to come to terms with the decisive verdict against it in Karnataka and was "manufacturing lies" and indulging in politics of polarisation.
The Congress on Saturday made a stunning comeback in the state, ousting the BJP from its lone southern citadel with a comfortable majority in a morale booster win. (PTI)
Karnataka has voted decisively for the Congress, after a decade. In 2013, it won 122 seats with a 36 per cent vote. On Saturday, it won 135 seats — its ally, the Sarvodaya Karnataka Paksha, won the one seat it contested — more than double the BJP’s tally of 66, and almost 43 per cent of the vote.
The BJP performed below par across the state, including in its strongholds such as the capital city of Bengaluru, despite Prime Minister Narendra Modi leading the campaign. The PM had given a personal tone to the campaign, framing the election as a vote for a double-engine sarkar. He also gave it a polarising spin, particularly in the last lap, by invoking Bajrang Bali. The gambit failed.
The electorate preferred the Congress’s promise of welfare and its endorsement of secularism: the Congress manifesto had borrowed the great poet Kuvempu’s famous line, “Sarva janangada shanthiya thota (the garden where all communities live in peace)”, as its credo. Hence, it is tempting to agree with Rahul Gandhi’s remark that “Karnataka mein nafrat ka bazaar band hua hai aur mohabbat ki dukan khuli hai”. It is also true that the Bharat Jodo Yatra, which Rahul led, passed through the length of Karnataka, and the Congress has done remarkably well in those areas. Know more here
Thanking the people who voted for the Congress in the Jayanagara constituency, party leader Soumya Reddy said that the counting of votes in the constituency involved foul play.
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, whil addressing reporters, said that the five guarantees that the party has promised will be implemented once the cabinet is formed.
First the Supreme Court, and now the Karnataka voters, have taken the BJP down a notch or two. On Thursday, the Supreme Court upheld the primacy of the elected government over the Centre’s appointee, the Lt Governor, in running the state of Delhi (‘Power where it’s due’, May 12; ‘With great power, respect’, May 12; ‘One nation, many governments’, May 13)). On the same day, the Court also ruled on the government formation in Maharashtra. It refused to restore status quo ante in Mumbai but the order of the five-judge bench in the matter ruined the image of the Eknath Shinde government. It was severe on then Maharashtra governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari, whose decision to call a floor test led to the fall of the Uddhav Thackeray government, and later, a split in the Shiv Sena. The order has widely been interpreted as a moral victory for the beleaguered Shiv Sena UBT, the group led by Thackeray. There is no threat to the stability of the Shinde-BJP government, but its legitimacy in office has come under a cloud for sure (‘No toppling games’, May 12; ‘The apex court’s red lines’, May 12; ‘Closure in Mumbai’, May 12; ‘Victory for the real Sena’, May 13).
The big story, however, is the Karnataka assembly election results. Read the rest of the story here
The Congress on Sunday appointed three central observers, including senior leader Sushil Kumar Shinde, ahead of its crucial legislature party meeting in Karnataka to elect the new chief minister, amid hectic lobbying for the top post.
Besides Shinde, a former chief minister of Maharashtra, the other observers are party general secretary Jitendra Singh and former AICC general secretary Deepak Babaria.
AICC general secretary (Organisation) K C Venugopal said the central observers would oversee the Congress Legislature Party (CLP) meeting.
The high-profile Hindutva issues raised by the ruling BJP during its tenure in Karnataka, including the Congress’s promise of action against the Bajrang Dal, failed to resonate with voters in Karnataka. The only exception was the coastal region, where the party anyway remains a dominant force.
During the campaign, the BJP initially treaded carefully over issues such as ban on hijab and halal meat that were raised during its government. However, later, as things appeared to be going tough for the party, it latched on to the Congress manifesto promise to crack down on organisations that disrupt communal harmony, putting the radical Islamist outfit Popular Front of India and Bajrang Dal in the same bracket.
The BJP’s counter to this was led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who linked the Congress’s promise to it seeking to “imprison Hanuman”. Thereafter, the party further raised the pitch, asking voters to chant “Jai Bajrang Bali” when they went to vote. Akram M writes
AICC general secretary in-charge of Karnataka Randeep Singh Surjewala on Sunday said Latha Mallikarjun, who has got elected as an independent from Harapanahalli Assembly segment has extended unconditional support to the Congress party in the State.
Latha Mallikarjun, is daughter of veteran leader and former Deputy Chief Minister, late M P Prakash. (PTI)
THE ONE person for whom the clear majority for the Congress party in the Karnataka polls will taste the sweetest is 60-year-old state party chief D K Shivakumar.
The former minister who was appointed Karnataka PCC chief in 2020 despite being arrested a year earlier by the Enforcement Directorate on charges of money laundering, fought a long, uphill battle to bring the party to position of power.
Once considered a blue-eyed boy of former Congress chief minister S M Krishna, Shivakumar appeared to have run aground following the corruption cloud hanging over him from his time as minister during the Congress tenures of 1999-2004 and 2013-2018. Now, he is a frontrunner to be CM of Karnataka. Know more here
“I won’t accept defeat (against Siddaramaiah) very easily. I will fight till the end.”
These were the words of former minister V Somanna when The Indian Express interviewed him last month. But the BJP leader ended up not putting up much fight as he lost to the Congress heavyweight and front-runner for the Chief Minister’s post by 46,163 votes in Varuna in Mysuru district. The former housing minister also lost his fall-back option of Chamarajanagar, a “safe seat” the BJP had allotted him.
Seemingly irked by the party’s decision to remove him from Govindarajanagar and the lack of Lingayat support in both seats, the 72-year-old Lingayat leader on Sunday, when asked why he could not consolidate Lingayat votes in Varuna despite the constituency having 40% Lingayats, said, “You should ask (former CM) B S Yediyurappa why Lingayat votes were divided. He is BJP’s tallest leader and a Lingayat. I do not want to dwell more on it.” Read more here
With the Congress party meeting, that will likely decide who the next state CM is, set to happen today, state party chief D K Shivakumar said that he has no differences with Siddaramaiah. Former CM Siddaramaiah and KPCC chief D K Shivakumar are the frontrunners for the post of Karnataka Chief Minister.
Karnataka’s people have taken back their state, and how. They have voted to show the door to the government that rode the “caboose” of the “engine” in Delhi, while generously stoking that engine with its robust economic resources. It is a vote that has acted firmly against the tedious and unproductive insistence that we were being given “development” when all we got were messages of hate, threats of violence, the ever-deferred better futures, yoked always to the Union government’s plans for the state, while the BJP was either consolidating its grip on home-grown economic successes (such as the Karnataka Milk Federation) or digging deep into other’s pockets.
In all the endless TV chatter and “analysis” that was generated by news channels, banal reference was made to the place of “anti-incumbency” in determining this historic election’s outcome. This ignores several positive aspects of the campaigns that have borne fruit for the Congress. The first, and most important, was the visibility and engagement of local leaders with issues that mattered to the people. Read more here
The Karnataka Assembly election results on Saturday threw up some surprise wins and also some major upsets. The highest victory margin for any party since 1989, wins for three politician-brothers from the Belagavi district, two of whom are in the BJP and one in the Congress, and a win for mining baron G Janardhan Reddy – these are some of the interesting highlights from results day. Read here
One of the curious outcomes of the 2023 Karnataka Assembly polls is that the BJP retained its total vote share of 36 per cent in the state but ended up losing more than 40 per cent of its existing 116 seats in the Assembly.
The reason for the BJP winning only 65 seats with a 36 per cent vote share — unlike 2018 when it won 104 seats with the same voting percentage — is the fact that the high vote share has come from only two specific regions of the state — Old Mysore and Bengaluru — unlike 2018, when the vote share was from all over, and the fact that it has eaten into the JDS vote share in south Karnataka without winning seats.
Read more here
With the Congress clinching victory by recording its best performance in Karnataka Assembly elections after 1989, and the BJP holding its fort with just a marginal dip in vote share, the state appears to be heading towards a bipolar electoral landscape as the JD(S)’s base shrinks to its lowest level in the last two decades.
By Saturday evening, the Congress had won 131 seats and was leading in five others, effectively taking its tally to 136. This would be the highest since 1989, when the party had won 178 seats.
The Congress’s vote share, too, reached a high of 42.9% — also the highest after 1989, when it had won 43.76% of the votes polled.
Damini Nath and Harikishan Sharma report
With the Congress clinching victory by recording its best performance in Karnataka Assembly elections after 1989, and the BJP holding its fort with just a marginal dip in vote share, the state appears to be heading towards a bipolar electoral landscape as the JD(S)’s base shrinks to its lowest level in the last two decades.
By Saturday evening, the Congress had won 131 seats and was leading in five others, effectively taking its tally to 136. This would be the highest since 1989, when the party had won 178 seats.
The Congress’s vote share, too, reached a high of 42.9% — also the highest after 1989, when it had won 43.76% of the votes polled.
Damini Nath and Harikishan Sharma report
For a long time, the Congress headquarters in Delhi had not seen the celebrations that erupted Saturday after the Karnataka results: drums, dancing, a sense of purpose in many a step of the Youth Congress men and women. Early in the day, when the Congress tally hovered around 113-114-116 leads, it seemed the Congress may either have to join hands with the Janata Dal(S) or it would be vulnerable to poaching — now or six months or a year down the line. But the Congress finished with a convincing number and 43% of the popular vote — a decisive mandate with an appeal cutting across castes and regions.
A senior BJP leader had predicted a day earlier that if the Congress won Karnataka, “unke andar ek ichha shakti jaag jayegi ki hum jeet sakte hain”. So far the Congress has been reconciled to losing with some exceptions like the recent win in Himachal Pradesh. This sense of a newly awakened optimism and confidence could make a difference in 2024.
Is Karnataka a one-off or does it hold replicable lessons for the Congress going to other state polls this winter — and finally the general elections due next year.
Read The Neerja Chowdhury Column here
Karnataka ministers V Somanna, B C Nagesh K Sudhakar, and K C Narayana Gowda were among the heavyweights in the BJP-led government who lost the Assembly elections on Saturday.
Housing Minister Somanna lost to Congress leader and chief ministerial candidate Siddaramaiah in Mysuru district’s Varuna constituency by 46,006 votes and lost from Chamarajanagar by 7,383 votes to former minister C S Puttarangasetty of the Congress.
Along with Revenue Minister R Ashok, Somanna was among the two senior leaders whom the party’s central leadership picked to contest from two constituencies. Ashok lost to Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) president D K Shivakumar from Kanakapura by 1.21 lakh votes but managed to retain Padmanabhanagar in Bengaluru South by 54,734 votes, winning his seventh consecutive Assembly election.
Akram M reports
One of the curious outcomes of the 2023 Karnataka Assembly polls is that the BJP retained its total vote share of 36 per cent in the state but ended up losing more than 40 per cent of its existing 116 seats in the Assembly.
The reason for the BJP winning only 65 seats with a 36 per cent vote share — unlike 2018 when it won 104 seats with the same voting percentage — is the fact that the high vote share has come from only two specific regions of the state — Old Mysore and Bengaluru — unlike 2018, when the vote share was from all over, and the fact that it has eaten into the JDS vote share in south Karnataka without winning seats.
A look at the region-wise breakup of seats won by the Congress, BJP and JDS in the latest polls, when a record 73 per cent of polling was registered, reveals that the Congress increased its vote share from 38 per cent (80 seats) in 2018 to 43 per cent to win 135 seats, while the JDS saw its vote share dip from 18 per cent (37 seats) to 13 per cent to win 19 seats.
The seven per cent difference between the Congress and the BJP’s vote share has resulted in a difference of 70 seats between the two parties. Read Full Report
The incumbent Congress MLA from the Gulbarga North constituency, Kaneez Fatima – the lone Muslim woman candidate fielded by the party in the Karnataka Assembly elections – has retained her seat after a close fight with the BJP’s Chandrakanth Patil, a Lingayat youth leader.
Fatima, 63, garnered 80,973 votes with 45.28% vote share as against Patil’s 78,261 votes with 43.76% vote share to win the Gulbarga North seat with a margin of 2,712 votes.
Fatima was pulled away from her domestic role into the spotlight of public life a few months before the 2018 Assembly polls, when her husband Qamarul Islam, a minister and six-term local MLA, passed away.
Read more about Kaneez Fatima here.
In the BJP's Karnataka loss, the one defeat that would have hurt the most was a 38-year-old coaching institute owner trouncing its sitting Health Minister, K Sudhakar.
What would have made the loss even more bitter was that Congress winner Pradeep Eshwar used to be an aide of Sudhakar’s. The party’s campaign committee chairman, one of its most powerful ministers in the state, and a trusted aide of outgoing Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai, Sudhakar lost to Eshwar by 10,642 votes in the Chikkaballapur seat.
Read the Political Pulse here.
The Hubballi region of Kittur Karnataka was widely considered to be a fiefdom of the Shettar family for many decades. That reputation took a hit on Saturday as former Karnataka Chief Minister Jagadish Shettar lost the Hubli-Dharwad seat.
Shettar lost the seat to Mahesh Tenginakai of the BJP by 34,289 votes, failing to make it to the Assembly for the first time since 1994.
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) runs in the 67-year-old’s blood and he has been a part of the BJP since its Jan Sangh days. But after the BJP denied him a ticket from the seat, Shettar, a six-time MLA from the region, quit the party last month in the run-up to the elections. The Shettars are from the dominant Lingayat caste community, who make up 20% of the population of the Hubballi region.
Read more here.
Battered by a string of losses nationwide, the Congress Friday registered a resounding win in the elections to the 16th Karnataka Assembly, its fightback riding on a strong anti-incumbency wave against the ruling BJP in the face of a last-ditch, high-decibel push led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP leadership.
The ruling BJP which held 118 seats in the 15th Assembly was reduced to 65 by the Congress surge from 69 seats to 136. With a 43% vote share, Congress registered a seven percent lead over the BJP’s 35.9 in the course of the win.
The regional Janata Dal (Secular) party’s tally fell from 32 seats to 19. The party which won 37 seats with an 18% vote share in 2018 was reduced to 19 seats following a five percent drop in vote share to 13 percent.
Read the full analysis by Johnson T A here.
The Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) Saturday hailed the party’s victory in the Karnataka Assembly election as a turning point and vowed to repeat it in Telangana.
“People of Karnataka have overwhelmingly rejected the hate politics of the BJP and have voted for development promised by the Congress. Karnataka leads the way of the Congress comeback across the nation,” said TPCC chief A Revanth Reddy.
“This clear victory shows that people want a change and they are not happy with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other BJP leaders and their divisive politics,” said senior Congress leader and former minister Mohammed Ali Shabbir.
Read the Political Pulse here.
The high-profile Hindutva issues raised by the ruling BJP during its tenure in Karnataka, including the Congress’s promise of action against the Bajrang Dal, failed to resonate with voters in Karnataka.
The only exception was the coastal region, where the party anyway remains a dominant force. During the campaign, the BJP initially treaded carefully over issues such as ban on hijab and halal meat that were raised during its government.
However, later, as things appeared to be going tough for the party, it latched on to the Congress manifesto promise to crack down on organisations that disrupt communal harmony, putting the radical Islamist outfit Popular Front of India and Bajrang Dal in the same bracket. Read the analysis by Akram M here.
Throughout 2021, the one Karnataka BJP face that was always in the headlines was B C Nagesh, the state School Education Minister.
From the hijab controversy to the allegation of ‘saffronising’ school textbooks, Nagesh was at the centre of every communally-tinged controversy in the state, and the focal point of the criticism of the Opposition. On Saturday, Nagesh was in the news again, but for a very different reason — his lost from the Tiptur Assembly seat in Tumkur district to Congress rival K Shadakshari by over 17,000 votes.
Sanath Prasad writes.
As the incumbent Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai conceded the BJP’s defeat in the Karnataka Assembly polls, the party kicked off the exercise of introspection into the factors that led to its debacle.
Liz Mathew takes you through some of the key things that seem to have gone wrong for the party in the Karnataka polls:
1. Leadership confusion
In an attempt to prepare the Karnataka BJP for election under a new leadership, the party high command had in July 2021 replaced its veteran leader and four-time chief minister B S Yediyurappa with a younger Basavaraj Bommai, who was considered a good administrator with a clean image. However, with Bommai failing to emerge as a popular leader, the party had to fall back on Yediyurappa, who still enjoys popularity and acceptance across communities and regions.
Read the Political Pulse here.
BJP heavyweight and posterboy CT Ravi displayed a tad bit of defiance in his concession speech, even though he was one in the slew of saffron party candidates who list in the Karnataka assembly polls today. Terming the loss as 'personal' and not that of the BJP ideology, this controversial figure thanked the people of Karnataka for the support extended. "We will introspect in the coming days and rectify our mistakes. Our efforts to build a Suvarna Karnataka will continue," he said.
Ravi rose through the BJP ranks in Chikkamagaluru, which lies adjacent to the polarised coastal Karnataka region, as a youth leader in the post-Babri era (in the 1990s). He played a key role in a Hindutva agitation for control of a shrine in the Bababudangiri Hills. Read more.
Swaroop Prakash defeated 2018 winner Preetham Gowda by 10,000 votes in the May 10 Assembly elections, thus helping JD(S) wrest back Hassan city from the lotus party.But, in what appears to be a bittersweet moment, the JD(S) has lost more ground this time, than in 2013 and 2018. JD(S) captured five and six seats in the 2013 and 2018 assembly elections, respectively. However, in 2023, the JD(S) was able to win only four seats of the total seven.
Hassan disrict made headlines after a row within the JD(S) chief HD Kumaraswamy’s family over candidate selection, that was termed as 'dynastic politics'. Read here.
As the Congress register a thumping win in Karnataka, it will be interesting to see who bags the chief ministerial berth. While Siddaramaiah is the political face of the party, D K Shivakumar has been the architect, whose strategy and tactics helped Congress who the community-dominated elctorate of Karnataka. His well-targeted game plan aided Congress to stay focussed on local issues plaguing the common man and thus, has become a front runner to be the CM.
The Karnataka victory has validated the Congress game plan of focusing on hyper-local issues and dependable local leadership. The grand old party may try to replicate this success story in upcoming elections of Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh. It hopes a huge win once again, a year ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, will bolster confidence and help it quash the narrative that it cannot battle the BJP directly.
But, there is also a need to temper the exhilaration of victory with prudence. It is not necessary that the Karnataka victory will be automatically replicated in the 2024 elections even in the southern state. Read more
Congratulations to the Congress Party for its emphatic victory. Victory has many fathers and defeat is an orphan. Let us try to see how this loss for the BJP came about. The Karnataka 2023 election throws up interesting issues and challenges for the BJP. It is now apt and important to introspect.
After a fractured mandate in 2018 (with the BJP as the single-largest party with 104 seats with 36.35 per cent of total votes, 77 for Congress with 38.14 per cent of total votes, 37 for JDS with 18.3 per cent of total votes, one each for BSP and KPJP and one independent), BJP could topple the coalition of Congress and JDS to form the government in 2019, by inducting MLAs from the other parties. That was by far the greatest achievement of the BJP in Karnataka in the last four years. The rest is now history. If we have to narrow down the causes for the abysmal performance of the BJP in this election, four stand out. Read More
Congress has won because the people have realised that they use religion and the nationalism to invoke passions and win votes. And when they come to power they don’t keep their governance promises. When the people started noticing this, the BJP started pushing its divisive and polarising agenda.
Now, the BJP stands exposed and the people of Karnataka have rejected them. They wanted a party which would heal the wounds of the divisions created by the BJP; fulfil the aspirations of the youth, a large section of whom are unemployed, and address the suffering of all those who have been betrayed by the government: The poor, marginalised, small and medium traders. That is why Congress Party has got a decisive victory. The people of Karnataka have voted for an inclusive government. It is a big win for the Congress and sends a message to the BJP: They way the party ill-treated democracy, the manner in which Rahul Gandhi was disqualified as an MP, will not be tolerated by the people. Read More
The fate of BJP state president Nalin Kumar Kateel has been rendered uncertain by the party’s bitter defeat in the Karnataka Assembly elections.
A three-time MP from the Dakshina Kannada district, Kateel’s appointment as party president in August 2019 had surprised many. Even though the names of several top BJP leaders were doing the rounds as replacement for B S Yediyurappa, the party high command chose Kateel as the state president. The MP’s proximity to BJP general secretary (organisation) B L Santhosh was attributed as the reason for his elevation. Read More
As the Congress party raced past the majority mark in Karnataka, wishes followed, even from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was seen campaigning relentlessly across the state ahead of the polls. Taking to Twitter, PM Modi said: “Congratulations to the Congress Party for their victory in the Karnataka Assembly polls. My best wishes to them in fulfilling people’s aspirations.”
The one person for whom the clear majority for the Congress party in the Karnataka polls will taste the sweetest is 60-year-old state party chief D K Shivakumar. The former minister who was appointed Karnataka PCC chief in 2020 despite being arrested a year earlier by the Enforcement Directorate on charges of money laundering, fought a long, uphill battle to bring the party to position of power.
Once considered a blue-eyed boy of former Congress chief minister S M Krishna, Shivakumar appeared to have run aground following the corruption cloud hanging over him from his time as minister during the Congress tenures of 1999-2004 and 2013-2018. Now, he is a frontrunner to be CM of Karnataka. Read More
The outcome of the Karnataka Assembly elections is a wake-up call for the BJP in Maharashtra. It is likely to push the leadership to go back to the drawing board and reconsider its widely criticised Operation Lotus strategy. With the Congress set to form the government in Karnataka, the BJP will be forced to confront two questions: Does the defeat of the Basavaraj Bommai government translate into the failure of Operation Lotus? And will Maharashtra meet the same fate as its neighbour in the 2024 Assembly elections? Read More
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi Saturday, reacting to the party’s victory in Karnataka Assembly elections, said, “the markets of hatred have closed down, and shops of love have opened in Karnataka.” “We contested Karnataka polls with love, not hate,” he said. “This will happen in all states,” Gandhi added. Assembly elections in four states — Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Telangana — are due later this year. Read More
While most exit polls had given an edge to the Congress in the Karnataka Assembly polls, very few had predicted that it will go past the majority mark. However, as the counting goes on, Congress leads in 135 seats, well past the halfway mark of 112. While the BJP is leading in 65 seats, JD(S)’s number has gone down to 20.
It was the India Today-Axis My India poll that had pegged Congress to win 122-140 seats, while the India TV-CNX poll gave them 110-120 seats and the Zee News-Matrize 103-118 seats. Read More
In sporting terms, the Karnataka Assembly elections can be termed as the quarter-finals and the elections in Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, and Telangana later this year the semi-finals ahead of the all-important Lok Sabha battle next year. The outcome of the Congress victory in Karnataka in many ways is a pointer to how the battle for supremacy in the general elections will shape up. Click Here to read the key takeaways from the poll results.
While not many anticipated a loss for the BJP in the Karnataka polls, very few could have imagined that a 38-year-old youngster will manage to trounce health minister K Sudhakar.
In one of the biggest upsets, Pradeep Eshwar of Congress has managed to defeat K Sudhakar by a margin of 10,642 votes. Pradeep Eshwar, a 12th pass, runs M/s Parishrama Education (opc) Pvt. Ltd, where students appearing for medical examinations and other competitive courses are trained.
K Sudhakar, who was one of the most powerful ministers in Basavaraj Bommai's cabinet, suffered defeat. Pradeep's election campaign speeches were a hit in Chikkaballapur region. — Kiran Parashar reports
In case you missed, watch an analysis of the Karnataka election results so far:
Speaking for the first time since the resounding performance of the Congress in Karnataka, senior leader Rahul Gandhi, while thanking the people of the state, said: “We fought with love and the people of Karnataka showed the country that it despises the politics of hate. I thank and congratulate the Congress party workers and leaders of the state. The strength of the poor people of Karnataka have defeated the crony capitalists.”
Congress’s success has been largely due to focus on local issues and avoiding getting entangled in Hindutva rhetoric. The results seem to be along the lines of the exit polls, which had indicated a BJP loss in Karnataka. With this loss, BJP is set to lose control of the lone southern state under its rule. Congress has gained around 5 per cent in terms of vote share when compared to 2018, winning 43 per cent of all votes polled.
For an unlikely Chief Minister, Basavaraj Bommai, 63, had got off to a good start. In the second month of his tenure, on September 2, 2021, he got a leg-up when Union Home Minister Amit Shah — on his first visit to Karnataka after Bommai took over — endorsed him as the man to lead the BJP into the 2023 Assembly elections in Karnataka.
But that honeymoon period barely lasted six months with a gradual piling up of woes against Bommai — within the party, the central leadership, the state government and public at large. There were complaints of a lack of will in tackling corruption and large-scale indecisiveness on pending and new projects.
During the campaign, as it became clear that Bommai had left barely a mark, he was sidelined, with the central leadership setting the agenda and the narrative. Read more