Elections to the 224-member Karnataka Legislative Assembly will be held in a single phase on May 10 and the results will be declared on May 13, the Election Commission of India announced on Wednesday, March 29.
The announcement means the Model Code of Conduct for the elections has come into force with immediate effect. Speaking at a press conference, Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar said that Karnataka has a total of 5.21 voters, with 2.62 crore men and 2.59 crore women. The state will have a total of 58,282 polling stations. The gazette notification will be issued on April 13. The last date for filing nominations will be April 20.
This brings to a close an eventful period of five years during which the Chief Minister’s post changed hands three times before finally resting with Basavaraj Somappa Bommai, son of the late socialist leader and former CM, SR Bommai. His tenure was marked by intense pressure from the Opposition as well as a variety of social groups which the Bommai’s government countered with a combination of social justice and Hindutva politics.
The 2018 elections resulted in 104 seats for the BJP with 36.35% of the vote, 74 seats for the Congress with 38.14% of the vote and 37 seats for the JD (S) which got 18.3% of the vote. Although the governor invited the BJP to form the government as the single largest party, the government fell on the third day with an emotional Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa submitting his resignation to the then Governor Vajubhai Vala. This brought HD Kumaraswamy’s JD(S)-Congress coalition government to power. But it collapsed after just over a year when 13 Congress, 3 JD(S) MLAs and 1 MLA from the Karnataka Pragnyavantha Janata Party resigned after shifting their loyalties to the BJP. Yediyurappa came back as the Chief Minister for a second time in July 2019 but failed to complete his term after a rebellion against him in the party forced him to resign in July 2021 and hand power over to Bommai.
The three principal contesting parties seemed to have been in constant election mode during Karnataka’s 15th Assembly which Bommai is expected to formally dissolve soon. The oscillation of power not only led to dramatic scenes inside the Vidhana Soudha but often spilled onto the streets in the form of padayatras and protests led by elected representatives. Yeddyurappa, Kumaraswamy, Yeddyurappa again, and finally Bommai, never appeared fully settled in the job. They not only faced stiff opposition but also sabotage from within their ranks.
The BJP, JD(S) and Congress continue to be hobbled in their war efforts by a range of internal issues. The Gowda family, which leads the JD(S), has been openly feuding over the candidature of Bhavani, wife of HD Revanna, with Kumaraswamy openly expressing his support for HP Swaroop, son of former MLA HS Prakash. The Congress has not announced its Chief Ministerial candidate and is hamstrung by the perennial rivalry between DK Shivakumar and Siddaramaiah. In the BJP, where Yeddyurappa holds a much more diminished position today despite his considerable electoral influence, several top party leaders have been openly critical of the Lingayat leader’s efforts to pass the baton to his son, BY Vijayendra.
The BJP is relying heavily on the appeal of Prime Minister Narendra Modi who has already made seven visits to the state this year and addressed multiple mass events. The Congress, which has been in protest mode these last five years, would be hoping that their tirade against the government would translate into an anti-incumbency sentiment among voters. It will take a major upset for the JD(S) to emerge as the single largest party and, as always, the Vokkaliga party is expected to play spoilsport to all the well-laid-out plans of the two Delhi-based parties.
The last decade has witnessed major churning in Karnataka among various marginalised social groups under the Scheduled Caste (SC), Scheduled Tribe (ST) and Other Backward Classes (OBC) categories, with each vying for a greater share in political power and public resources. No government or CM during this time has been able to keep all these agitating castes and communities satisfied.
The failure of the Siddaramaiah-led government (2013-18) to implement internal reservations for SCs as per the recommendations of the Sadashiva Commission is accepted by Congress as one of the major reasons for the fall from 122 seats in 2013 to 74 seats in 2018. Indeed, the BJP’s success in the previous elections was largely attributed to the wave of support it received from the Madiga (SC) community which has been traditionally at the forefront of the internal reservations agitations across South India.
Although the saffron party held power for the most part of the last five years, it waited till the last moment to ring in major changes in Karnataka’s reservation policy. During the final Assembly session in December 2022, the Bommai government passed a law to increase the total share for SCs from 15 to 17% in jobs and educational seats but stopped short of implementing internal reservations. This led to speculation among Dalit leaders that the internal reservations demand might get sidestepped once again.
Amid growing criticism of the BJP for not implementing internal reservations, despite being in power at the state and national level, a group of prominent Madiga leaders joined the Congress last week. As if jolted into action by this shift, Bommai’s cabinet passed an ordinance dividing the 17% for SCs into 6% for Madiga and allied groups; 5.5% for Holeya and allied groups; 4.5% for Lambani, Bhovi, Korama and Koracha communities which were formerly listed as criminal tribes by the British under a racist law; and 1% for other SC groups. The government also shifted Muslims from the OBC list to the newly created Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) category to make room for groups such as Panchamashali Lingayats and Vokkaligas who are agitating for a greater share in the OBC quota.
This is being seen as the BJP’s masterstroke in social justice politics even though these moves are almost certain to invite litigation questioning the constitutional validity of sub-categorisation. There are 101 social groups clubbed under the SC category. They are incredibly diverse culturally and there are multiple opinions among various Dalit groups on the question of internal reservations.
Particularly in those communities which are relatively more advanced – such as Holeya as well as Korama, Koracha, Lambani and Bhovi – there is a sense that their upward mobility has been curtailed by internal reservations. The Lambanis in fact broke out in a riot responding to the announcement of internal reservations. This absence of a single homogeneous political opinion among Dalits has traditionally led to political parties stitching together alliances with smaller groups and hyperlocal leaders.
The Bommai government was plagued with allegations of corruption with the Karnataka State Contractors Association alleging that across government departments, 40% commission of the total project worth had to be paid as bribe to get the tenders and get payments released. A slew of other corruption charges include the private schools association alleging that bribes have to be paid for permissions, religious mutts alleging corruption in granting funds and a BJP legislator recently arrested by Lokayukta on bribery charges. While the Congress tried its best to go to the people with these issues, the BJP countered it effectively through its social engineering projects and Hindutva nationalism.
The BJP’s term has been marked by frequent communal flare-ups with agitations over the wearing of hijabs in school classrooms and the exclusion of Muslim traders from temple fairs leading to tensions boiling over in the state. The protests over wearing the hijab in the classroom and the response from Hindu students and their backers in Hindutva organisations threatened to disrupt law and order in the state in 2022. At the same time, Muslim traders were excluded from temple fairs across Karnataka after Hindutva organisations seeking such bans were emboldened by the state government mis-applying rules framed in 2002 to justify the ban.
In the same year, at least four prominent communal killings were reported in the state leading to questions being asked of the BJP government by the party’s workers themselves. The BJP has been accused of unfairly treating victims of communal violence in its regime with Hindu victims receiving prompt compensation from the state unlike Muslim victims. ( Agencies)
