There are lessons to be learned from the results to the Karnataka by polls where the JD(S)-Congress alliance bagged four out of the five seats. Not only has the BJP, that seemed so invincible till say a year or more back, lost resoundingly, but the overall drop in its vote share should be worrying its poll pundits. The voting percentage this time was 61.05% against 72.36% in 2014. Political pundits claim that the margin of victory or swing could have been over 3.5 lakhs but for the low voter turnout.

In Shimoga where BJP’s BY Raghavendra, son of party chief BS Yeddyurappa, won Shimoga parliamentary seat with a margin of 5,21,48 votes, there has been a huge vote-swing away from the BJP. In fact, in Shimoga which is a Lok Sabha seat and the only seat to be retained by the BJP, a staggering 3,11,157 voters turned away from the BJP. In fact, in the seats that the BJP lost, there were less votes lost by the supremacist party. The win in Shimoga was by a narrower margin of 52,148. In 2014, the last election, the BJP win was much more decisive when it polled 363,305 votes. Does this signal the ultimate dimming of the Modi image?

The Congress’ A S Nyamagouda and Anitha Kumaraswamy of the JD(S) won Jamkhandi and Ramanagaram assembly constituencies on Tuesday by a margin of 39,480 and 1,09,137 votes, respectively. Anitha Kumaraswamy is Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy’s wife. Congress’ VS Ugruppa and JD(S)’s LR Shivaramegowda won Ballari and Mandya Lok Sabha seats with a margin of 2,43,161 and 3,24,943 votes, respectively.

In the Mandya Lok Sabha seat, the winning margin has increased by 3,19,425 Votes for JDS. This means that the alliance has benefited. In 2014, the combined vote share of both the JD(S) and the INC (together) was a staggering 87.44% of the votes; they stood at one and two and the margin of victory was 5,518 votes.

The Bellary seat was grabbed by the Congress with the JD(S) in alliance. The INC had lost Bellary by a margin of 85,114 votes in 2014. The alliance worked here in favour of the Congress, there was a swing of 328,544 Votes in favour of the party and the Congress won by 243,430 votes.

Situation in Other states
Regional parties have fared better than the Congress and succeeded more in converting votes to seats. Regional players have polled a total of 152 million votes for 176 Seats showing that they are better organised and poll savvy. The real challenge for the Congress is in the Hindi Belt which has strong regional leaders. The Congress ranks only fourth in UP Bihar and West Bengal in the vote share. Though it stood at number two in Delhi it could win no seats; other states where it is at number two are  Rajasthan, Gujarat, Himachal and Uttarakhand.
The grand old party was able to garner very few seats in MP, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Punjab and Haryana: the vote conversion rate of the Congress with 106.7 million votes nationally is poor since in 2014 it won only 44 Seats. In contrast, regional leaders had a very high VCR except the BSP and SP. Maywati’s BSP Polled 22.9 million votes but could not pick up a single seat whereas Akhilesh (Samajwadi Party) polled 18 votes and acquired 5 seats. Mamta Bannerjee’s Trinamool Congress polled 20.3 million votes in the Lok Sabha in 2014 and won 34 seats. Jayalalitha’s AIDMK polled 18.1 million votes and secured 37 seats. Biju Patnaik’s BJD polled just 9.5 million votes but won 20 Seats, Udhav Thakeray’s Shiv Sena 10 million votes for 18 Seats, Chandrababu Naidu’s Telugu Desam got 14.1 million votes for 16 seats, KC Rao’s TRS got  6.7 million votes for 11 seats; the CPM 18 million votes but only got 9 seats and Sharad Pawar’s NCP 8.6 million votes for 6 seats.

 Significantly, unrecognized Parties and Independents polled 141 million votes and won a significant 98 Seats: they had much better conversion rate than Congress.

 (This analysis has been possible due to the significant inputs from analyst, Ravinder Singh)
 

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The alliance victory in four of the five seats that went to the polls on Saturday will also cement the ruling alliance in the state. The results are being seen not just as an indicator of people’s mood ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, but also as something that may have a bearing on the stability of the Congress-JD(S) coalition. This is even though the results, technically, cannot bring down the government by affecting its numerical strength.

Congress’ A S Nyamagouda and Anitha Kumaraswamy of the JD(S) won Jamkhandi and Ramanagaram assembly constituencies on Tuesday by a margin of 39,480 and 1,09,137 votes, respectively. Anitha Kumaraswamy is Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy’s wife. Congress’ VS Ugruppa and JD(S)’s LR Shivaramegowda won Ballari and Mandya Lok Sabha seats with a margin of 2,43,161 and 3,24,943 votes, respectively. While BJP’s BY Raghavendra, son of party chief BS Yeddyurappa, won Shimoga parliamentary seat with a margin of 5,21,48 votes.
A total of 31 candidates were in the fray from all the five constituencies, though the contest is mainly between the Congress-JDS combine and the BJP. The bypoll results will determine the fate of Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy’s wife Anita Kumaraswamy, state BJP chief B S Yeddyurappa’s son B Y Raghavendra and former Chief Minister S Bangarappa’s son Madhu Bangarappa and others.
 

A major embarrassment to the BJP was the loss of Bellary, where, after 14 years, BJP is set to lose Bellary LS seat.V S Ugrappa of the Congress has secured 4.78 lakh votes after 13 rounds of counting, an unbeatable lead over his BJP rival J Shanta who has so far secured 2.93 lakh votes. At the time of filing this report, there are just five more rounds to go. The constituency, once a Congress bastion, has been the scene of the famous electoral battle in which AICC president Sonia Gandhi made her electoral debut defeating senior BJP leader Sushma Swaraj in 1999. 

Sonia won, but the BJP wrested the seat in the 2004 polls and had retained it since. The present bypolls were necessitated after sitting MP B Sriramulu of the BJP vacated the seat following his victory in the 2018 Assembly polls from Molkalmuru constituency in Chitradurga district. Sriramulu had won the seat defeating N Y Hanumanthappa of the Congress by a margin of 85,000 votes. J Shanta is the sister of Sriramulu. The victory to the Congress can also be attributed to key strategist and Water Resources Minister D K Shivakumar, who is the district in-charge minister.  Shivakumar was also entrusted the task by the party to ensure the victory of the Congress candidate. It was a sort of proxy war between Shivakumar and Sriramulu. 

Both Shivakumar and Sriramalu are known for their electoral management skills and ‘never-say-die’ attitude. As part of its coalition arrangement with the Congress, the JD(S) did not contest. Despite reports of a ‘faction-ridden Ballari unit of the Congress’, finally the alliance unity overcame this hurdle. There had been intense speculation over whether Hosapete (Vijayanagar constituency) MLA Anand Singh and Ballari (ST) constituency MLA B  Nagendra may jump ship to the BJP after their demand for Cabinet berths were not met.

Shivakumar, while speaking to the media said that Ugrapps’s victory brought with a big responsibility for the party. “Ugrappa will be Congress’ voice in the Parliament. The Congress has sought votes from the electorate for the next five years. We will now focus on the development of Bellary district. The party will ensure that we will not break the trust of the voters,” he added.

Meawnhile, J Santha of the BJP, the sister of powerful Nayaka leader B Sriramulu, has secured 65,559 votes. The present bypoll was necessitated after Sriramulu vacated the seat following his victory in the 2018 Assembly polls from Molkalmuru constituency in Chitradurga district. 

Sriramulu had won the seat defeating N Y Hanumanthappa of the Congress by a margin of 85,000 votes.Ever since the constituency grabbed national attention, winning the seat has become a matter of prestige both for the Congress and the BJP. As part of its coalition arrangement with the Congress, the JD(S) did not contest.

Results
The Bellary Lok Sabha bypoll was supposed to have been a nail-biter as the BJP and the Congress carried out high-decibel campaigns. However, it is turning out to be a one-sided contest – Congress’ V S Ugrappa has polled 3.70 lakh votes whereas BJP’s J Shantha has polled 2.19 lakh votes – a huge margin of 1.51 lakh. 

In the Mandya Lok Sabha segment, the BJP fielded former bureaucrat Dr Siddaramaiah, whose “clean image” it hoped could give it leverage over JD(S) leader L R Shivarame Gowda. However, Shivaramegowda is leading by 1.60 lakh votes. 

Similarly, the saffron party was confident that Shrikant Kulkarni could wrest the seat from the Congress. However, Kulkarni has managed to poll 42,671 votes so far against Congress’ Anand Nyamagouda who is leading with 71,787. 

As far as Ramanagara Assembly constituency is concerned, the BJP virtually conceded defeat after its candidate L Chandrashekhar backed off 48 hours before voting day on November 3. This reflects in the result so far – JD(S) candidate Anitha Kumaraswamy has polled 69,269 votes, whereas Chandrashekhar has secured only 9,502 votes.

DS leader Anitha Kumaraswamy, who is elected from Ramanagaram assembly segment, is the first woman MLA from the Muslim majority segment.

Reactions
JD(S) leader, Karnataka CM HD Kumaraswamy:
This elections was the first step. There are 28 Lok Sabha seats, we’ll work with Congress to win all of them, that is our goal. This is not an empty boast just because we have won today. This is the confidence of people in us. This win is not making us arrogant: JD(S) leader, Karnataka CM HD Kumaraswamy.
 
 
 

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