Close fight between Congress, BJP on the cards in Karnataka

Bangalore: Neither the Congress party nor the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has an edge in Karnataka, which goes to the polls on Thursday.

All told, 121 seats across 12 states will be at stake in the fifth phase of polling. By the end of the day, India would have voted for 232 of the 543 parliamentary constituencies.

In Karnataka, both parties admit in private that it is a close fight, although their public pronouncements are, as they can be expected to be, far more confident.

Regional party Janata Dal (Secular), or JD(S) led by former prime minister H.D. Deve Gowda, is also expected to win up to three seats in its traditional strongholds, but the contest will largely be between the Congress and the BJP, according to Harish Ramaswamy, professor of political science at the Karnatak University, Dharwad.

In Karnataka, elections to all 28 parliamentary constituencies will happen on Thursday, across 24,648 polling stations. Out of the state’s 46 million voters, more than half are between the ages of 18 and 40, and a little under half are women. The voters have to choose from 435 candidates.

The BJP is hoping to replicate its showing in the 2009 polls when it won 19 seats, leaving the Congress with just six seats and the JD(S) with three. In the 2013 assembly elections, though, the Congress won 122 of the 224 seats and formed a government led by C. Siddaramaiah. Still, since then, the BJP has re-inducted former chief minister B.S. Yeddyurappa into the party, and that could improve its prospects.

The nation’s eye is on the Bangalore South constituency where Congress’s Nandan Nilekani, the billionaire co-founder of Infosys, is fighting BJP’s five-time member of Parliament (MP) Ananth Kumar. Kumar has claimed that the Aadhaar project headed by Nilekani was a waste of taxpayer money. Nilekani, who has sought to focus on local issues, has highlighted the BJP MP’s poor track record. The Congress last won the seat in 1989.

Meanwhile, in Chikkaballapur, two former chief ministers, Veerappa Moily of the Congress and H.D. Kumaraswamy of the JD(S) are slugging it out. The BJP candidate Bache Gowda, not as popular as his rivals, has received a lot of support from his party’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi, who personally addressed a rally attended by around 50,000 people in the constituency.

Narayana A., associate professor, school of policy and governance, at Azim Premji University, said that though Moily has been facing voter apathy over his inability to address local issues such as scarcity of water and jobs, he may scrape through because of the significant presence of the Vokkaliga community to which he belongs. Large parts of Karnataka have traditionally voted along community lines. The constituency also has a large proportion of Telugu speaking people who settled there generations ago from Andhra Pradesh, and Moily has had Telugu actor and Union tourism minister K. Chiranjeevi campaign for him.

The community play is also evident in Shimoga where Yeddyurappa is up against JD(S) candidate Geetha Shivarajkumar, a newbie, albeit one from a political family (she is the daughter of former chief minister S. Bangarappa). Yeddy, as he is popularly known, is counting on his support among the Lingayat community, which accounts for around 17% of the state’s population, to see him through, while Shivrajkumar is counting on the support of the Idiga community, which has a large presence in the constituency. Her husband is the son of the late Kannada film icon Rajkumar.

The emphasis on communities is also evident in the mining belt of Bellary where controversial BJP candidate B. Sriramulu—whose re-induction into the party was opposed by Sushma Swaraj because of his name being dragged into an illegal mining controversy—is battling it out against the Congress’s N.Y. Hanumanthappa, a former chief justice of the Orissa high court. Hanumanthappa is fighting on an anti-corruption ticket.

Sriramulu commands the support of backward classes and Valmiki community to which he belongs. Sandeep Shastri, pro-vice-chancellor at Jain University and director of its Centre for Research in Social Sciences and Education (CERSSE), said that while caste equations and local issues could influence voters, there is a focus on national and leadership issues this time around. Indeed, across states, the BJP has built its campaign around the claimed leadership abilities of Modi.

Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is fielding candidates in all 28 constituencies, the most prominent among whom is former Infosys director V. Balakrishnan, who is contesting from Bangalore Central. Balakrishnan faces a difficult task against sitting BJP MP P.C. Mohan and Congress’s Rizwan Arshad, who was handpicked by Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi.

Two other former chief ministers, the Congress’ Dharam Singh (Bidar) and the BJP’s D.V. Sadananda Gowda (Bangalore North), are in the fray, as is former prime minister H.D. Deve Gowda (Hassan).

pranav.n@livemint.com