The Congress's victory in Karnataka Assembly election has come as a confidence-booster not just for the Grand Old Party but also the larger Opposition bloc ahead of crucial elections in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Telangana, and the all-important Lok Sabha polls next year. In the results declared on May 13, the Congress posted its best performance in the state since 1989, bagging 135 seats in the 224-member House. The BJP won 66 seats — 38 fewer than in the 2018 state elections, when it had emerged as the single-largest party with 104 seats. In its worst performance in over two decades, the Janata Dal (Secular), meanwhile, was reduced to 19 seats. The contest this month was billed as a test for the hold of BJP’s centrally-driven “double-engine sarkar” and Hindutva models in the state, especially in the face of charges of corruption against the outgoing Basavaraj Bommai government and anti-incumbency in Karnataka. For the JD(S), the third player in the state, it was a question of whether and how much the regional party can hold on to its political space and remain relevant in a fight between the Big Two. So what is the larger story that the May 13 result tells us? What are the factors that led to the outcome? Is there a pattern across the state or is it a sum of different regions? And how will the results affect the two major parties in the run-up to the General Election in 2024? To understand the results and the factors at play in Karnataka, to go beyond the numbers and percentages, social historian and political commentator Prithvi Datta Chandra Shobhi will be the guest at the Explained Live event on Wednesday evening. He will be in conversation with National Opinion Editor Vandita Mishra Shobhi, who studied history and literature at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and obtained a PhD from the University of Chicago, is Associate Professor, History, and Associate Dean at Krea University in Andhra Pradesh. Mishra travelled across Karnataka to cover the Assembly election for The Indian Express.
