The constituencies that went to polls are Athani, Kagwad, Gokak, Yellapur, Hirekerur, Ranibennur, Vijayanagar, Chikballapur, KR Puram, Yeshwanthpur, Mahalakshmi Layout, Shivajinagar, Hoskote, KR Pet and Hunsur. This covers over 37 lakh eligible electors including over 18 lakh women voters.

Bye elections were necessitated in wake of a rebellion by 17 Congress and JD(S) legislators in mid-July when they resigned to protest the then government’s functioning leading to their disqualification.

These bye elections are extremely important for the BJP that already danced a rather complicated tango with the democratic process when assemble elections were held in the state. From resort politics to horse-trading to allegations of misusing the state police to intimidate rivals, the BJP left no stone unturned in their bid to grab and hold on to power in Karnataka.

While the Congress and BJP are fielding candidates from all 15 seats, the JD(S) is contesting 12 seats. Speculation is rife that the Congress and JD(S) could join hands to keep the BJP out. There is already resentment among BJP supporters as tickets were given to the disqualified rebel candidates who are perceived as outsiders. The BJP needs to win at least six seats to maintain its majority in the 225-member assembly where after the disqualification the tally stands as follows:

BJP 105 (including one independent)

Congress 66

JD(S) 34

BSP 1

Nominated 1

Speaker

Total 208

Polling that was initially scheduled for October 21, was finally conducted on December 5, 2019. Over 10,000 state police personnel were deployed along with over 2500 Central Armed Police Force (CAPF) personnel. Out of the total 4,185 polling stations, 884 have been marked critical. (Source – Deccan Herald)

Related:

Siddaramaiah and Kumaraswamy booked for sedition and defamation
Losing game: BJP’s footprint shrinks from 71% in 2014 to 40% in 2018

The post Karnataka bye elections to determine BJP’s fate in the state appeared first on SabrangIndia.

In an interesting move, the BJP has excluded two of its most controversial — and provocative — public speakers out of the list of its star campaigners for the December 5 by-elections to 15 Assembly seats. Party sources in the state suggested that fielding veteran MP Anant Kumar Hegde and first time parliamentarian Tejasvi Surya would have been embarrassing since they had till recently been lambasting most of the BJP’s current candidates — Congress and Janata Dal Secular defectors. Apart from these two, also absent from the list forwarded to the Election Commission is former Congress chief minister S.M. Krishna, 87, who joined the BJP in 2017.

Why? A senior BJP leader said the party wanted to keep the campaign free of the sort of controversies that had marred almost all recent elections. “With so many newcomers (from the Congress and the JDS) we don’t want to trigger any issues within the party. It’s better to keep it that way since we must win seven seats to keep this government alive,” the leader, who declined to be named, said.

In January this year, then Union Minister Ananth Kumar Hegde, who is known to make controversial statements in the past, yet again sparked a row on Sunday after he explained how to keep “Hindu girls safe.” Addressing a public event in Karnakata’s Kodagu, Hegde said that the hands which “touch” Hindu girls, should be “chopped off” and “cease to exist.”  In a statement that clearly amounted to hate speech, Hegde said, “There should be a fundamental shift in our thinking. We should keenly observe what’s happening around us. Regardless of caste and religion, a hand that touches a Hindu girl should not exist. History is written like that.” 

Meanwhile, in the same speech, Hegde also claimed that the Taj Mahal in Agra was not built by Muslims and that it was a “Shiv Mandir called Tejo Mahalaya.” He said, “Taj Mahal was not built by Muslims. It’s definitely not built by Muslims, the history speaks for it. Shah Jahan in his autobiography has said he bought this palace from King Jayasimha. It’s a Shiv Mandir built by King Paramatheertha, Tejo Mahalaya. Tejo Mahalaya became Taj Mahal. If we keep sleeping, most of our houses also will be named manzil. In future, Lord Ram will be called jahanpana and Sita will become bibi.”

The BJP can only survive in power if seven of these defectors win the elections. Opportunism overrides ideology for the time being, at least! The BJP has 105 MLAs and the support of an Independent in a House of 208. The 15 by-elections will raise the Assembly’s strength to 223 and the majority mark to 112, and seven wins will give the BJP a majority of its own.

Two of the state’s 225 Assembly constituencies will not witness a vote because of a court case involving alleged malpractices in the 2018 Assembly polls.“Perhaps the party thought it would be better to use their (Hegde and Surya) services in the Lok Sabha,” the leader said, alluding to the Parliament session that began on Monday.

Until now, Hegde has been an all-time favourite for the saffron party, Six-time Lok Sabha member Hegde and first-time MP Surya could not be reached for comments as they were in Delhi for the Lok Sabha session. Krishna’s secretary said he was down with fever and was not taking calls or meeting people.  Hegde had controversially lauded Nathuram Godse in the middle of the Lok Sabha polls, tweeting it was time to “move away from being apologetic” about Gandhi’s murder. His comment had come soon after BJP candidate and terror accused Pragya Singh Thakur had called Godse a “patriot”.

Hegde had also asked how Rahul Gandhi, “born of a Muslim father and a Christian mother”, could claim to be a Brahmin. In 2016, Hegde had been also booked for hate speech over a reported comment attacking Islam. Hegde has been booked by Karnataka police for making a deliberate statement to media that unless Islam is eliminated, terrorism cannot be rooted out.

On November 9 this year, a special court for trial of criminal cases against MLAs and MPs has rejected Uttara Kannada MP Anantkumar Hegde’s plea to drop his name from the hate speech case booked during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. While hearing the appeal, special court judge Ramachandra D Huddar directed the prosecution to file charge-sheet and adjourned the matter to December 16. The Election Commission had filed a case against Hegde on the allegations of delivering a religious provocative speech in Manki police station limits, Uttara Kannada district. Following the case, MP Hegde filed an appeal seeking to drop his name from the case.
Surya, 29, whom BJP president Amit Shah had handpicked as a Lok Sabha candidate, had during the summer campaign appeared to equate support for Modi with patriotism.

“The Left-liberals on Twitter may not like me saying this. But this election is a test of a common Indian’s patriotism, and if you are with Modi you are with India, if you are not with Modi you are anti-India,” he had said.

In 13 of the 15 seats, the BJP has fielded defectors from the Congress-JDS who had helped it grab power in Karnataka in July. But it has left out two of the rebels to give tickets to disgruntled old loyalists.

The BJP last week denied admission to R. Roshan Baig — the lone Muslim among the rebels — apparently because of the corruption cases against him. Another Congress rebel, R. Shankar, is likely to be accommodated in the legislative council. The list of the 40 campaigners includes chief minister B.S. Yediyurappa, state party president Nalin Kumar Kateel, Union ministers D.V. Sadananda Gowda, Pralhad Joshi and Suresh Angadi, national organising secretary B.L. Santosh and several state ministers and legislators.

Related Articles:

Abuse was the first weapon in the BJP campaign

BJP MP Anantkumar Hegde booked for hate speech

The post BJP’s Hate Mongers out of Karnataka By-Poll Campaign appeared first on SabrangIndia.

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)
 

The post It’s Not just losing but a huge Vote decline that signals Trouble for the BJP: Karnataka appeared first on SabrangIndia.