Abdul Bari Masoud analyses the results of Karnataka Assembly elections and highlights how the BJP had to bit the dust and how the various factors contributed to the rejuvenation of Congress in the State.
Defying all odds, including partisan referee, the Congress overwhelmingly defeated the incumbent ruling party in the just concluded 16th Assembly elections in Karnataka, and dethroned the BJP from power in the lone southern state, making ‘BJP-Free South India’. The Karnataka verdict also busted the many myths, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘invincibility’ that had been fostered by his managers with the support of a servile media and ‘double-engine sarkar’ slogan.
However, the fundamental message of the people of Karnataka may be summed up as a contemptuous rejection of the anti-Muslim rhetoric and actions of the incumbent BJP government and its top leadership. The verdict would also give those secular parties the confidence to confront the Hindutva bogey (which is nothing but anti- Muslim rhetoric) head-on, who play ‘soft’ Hindutva out of concern about losing ‘Hindu support’.
The verdict has a loud message that in Dravidian lands, there are few takers for Ariyan brand of Hindutva.
For the 224-member Legislative Assembly, elections were held on May 10 and results declared on May 13. The ruling BJP which held 118 seats in the 15th Assembly was reduced to 65 by the Congress surge from 69 seats to 136. With a 43% vote share, Congress registered a seven percent lead over the BJP’s 35.9 in the course of the win.
BJP’S HUMILIATING DEBACLE
BJP’s senior leaders had assumed full charge of the polling preparations and made all of the macro arrangements themselves. During his six-day visit, Modi attended 18 rallies and five roadshows as part of his frenzied tour of the State. Amit Shah, the party’s chief strategist, and a large number of Union Ministers were among the more than 120 central figures who actively campaigned in the State.
The party underperformed across the state, even in its strongholds like the capital city of Bengaluru where it lost three seats to Congress. Out of 28 seats, it got only 14 seats.
The party was unable to win even one of the Scheduled Tribe (ST) seats. In addition, the party suffered defeat in 24 of the 36 seats set aside for Scheduled Caste (SC) candidates.
Furthermore, in the debacle that has shocked the BJP leadership, 26 ministers in the Bommai government, who contested the election, almost half of them, including School Education Minister B C Nagesh who had created the Hijab row, bit the dust.
BJP came to power in the state twice but had never secured even the requisite majority for forming the government. Even in 2018 – when it won 104 seats – its popular vote-share was only 36% while the Congress won 80 seats with 38% votes. It formed a government under the leadership of B.S. Yeddiyurappa on August 25, 2019 by creating defections in the Congress and JD(S) ranks.
CONGRESS VICTORY
After a decade, the Congress made a stunning comeback in the state which was battered by a string of defeats nationwide. In 2013, it won 122 seats with a 36% vote. It won 135 seats – its ally, the Sarvodaya Karnataka Paksha, won the one seat it contested – more than double the BJP’s tally of 66, and almost 43% of the vote. Since 1989, when the party had won 178 seats, this is the biggest victory.
The vote share for the Congress also increased to a high of 42.9%, which is also a record high since 1989, when it received 43.76% of the votes cast.
The Congress manifesto used the renowned words “Sarva janangadashanthiyathota (the garden where all communities live in peace)” by the great poet Kuvempu as its motto. The public preferred this promise of welfare and its embrace of secularism. It is so tempting to concur with Rahul Gandhi’s statement that “Karnataka meinnafrat ka bazaar band huahai aur mohabbat ki dukan khulihai”.
The Congress adopted the strategy of focusing on hyper-local issues and trusted local leadership. It did not raise national issues like Adani scam and others but on local corruption issues. Its manifesto offered a cautious line on reinstating the old pension scheme (OPS) and promises to increase reservations for SCs, STs, OBCs, Lingayat and Vokkaliga communities, restore 4% quota for Muslims, and impose a ban on organisations spreading hate, whether it’s Bajrang Dal or PFI.
JD(S) POOR PERFORMANCE
The Janata Dal (Secular), led by former prime minister H.D. Deve Gowda, has seen its standing drop dramatically, going from kingmaker to minor player. The party’s vote total in the assembly elections fell to 20 seats from the 37 it had gained in 2018, and this, combined with a dramatic drop in vote share of five percentage points from 18.3% to 13.3%, resulted in its worst electoral showing since 2004.
MUSLIM FACTOR
Nine Muslim candidates won in the elections and all are from the Congress. Muslims are now slightly more represented in the new Assembly than they were in the last assembly. Seven Muslims were elected in the 2018 election. Compared to the 11 Muslim MLAs that were elected in 2013, this was a significant decline. Of the 211 candidates the JD(S) ran, 23 were Muslims, but none was elected. The BJP didn’t field even a single Muslim candidate.
Muslim votes played a key role in the Congress’s decisive win which accounted for 13 to 17 percent of the total voters. They helped at least 67 to 72 Congress candidates to win the elections.
After a close race against Chandrakanth Patil, a Lingayat youth activist running for the BJP, the incumbent Congress MLA from the Gulbarga North constituency, Kaneez Fatima – the only Muslim woman candidate fielded by the Congress – retained her seat. She faced a challenge from BJP and 9 Muslim rivals. She won the seat by a margin of 2,712 votes. Fatima, 63, received 80,973 votes with a 45.28% vote share as opposed to Patil’s 78,261 votes with a 43.76% vote share.
Besides Fatima, other Muslim candidates are Rahim Khan who won in Bidar by a margin of 10,659 votes; UT Khader Fareed in Mangalore by 22,977 votes; Tanveer Sait in Narasimharaja (Mysuru) by 31,091 votes; Asif (Raju) Sait in Belagavi North by 4,551 votes; Rizwan Arshad in Shivajinagar by 23,198 votes; BZ Zameer Ahmed Khan in Chamrajpet by 53,983 votes; HA Iqbal Hussain in Ramanagaram by 10,846 votes; and NA Haris in Shanti Nagar by 7,070 votes. All of them have been re-elected, except Asif (Raju) Sait and Iqbal Hussein, who are entering the Assembly for the first time.
Asaduddin Owaisi’s AIMIM contested two seats and secured only 0.02% of the votes polled. The SDPI met a similar fate as none of its 16 candidates could open their accounts.
Despite the BJP leaders’ extreme provocative statements and the Bommai government’s anti-Muslim measures, Muslims in the State showed exemplary patience and composure. The Congress appears to have benefited from the consolidation of Muslim votes.
IT’S DEFEAT OF HINDUTVA
In order to gloss over the Hindutva ideology defeat, several right-wing observers are terming the Karnataka verdict as a straightforward instance of anti-incumbency at the State level. It is partly true as Karnataka has not had a re-elected incumbent government in nearly 40 years. A renewed mandate appeared further away due to the high levels of unhappiness associated with the Bommai government in particular. However, an oversimplified anti-incumbency narrative that explains localised issues would simply hide how the current ‘national’ politics also substantially influences ‘state’ outcomes.
The BJP’s election campaign and Modi’s speeches were fiercely divisive and communal, with claims that the Congress was collaborating with terrorists and Amit Shah warning of rioting if the Congress won. The Supreme Court blocked the BJP’s decision to eliminate the 4% quota for Muslims on election eve, which served as the party’s campaign’s first salvo. Asking the voters to shout ‘Jai Bajrang Bali’ after pressing the EVM button was not the only case. In order to win over Hindu voters, Modi also used the polarising propaganda movie The Kerala Story. B.S. Bommai’s‘face’ was really a fig leaf for a campaign that was primarily overtly Hindutva. The Hijabban and Halalmeat, Azan, love jihad and other anti- Muslim issues ran throughout the campaign.
Voters in Karnataka did not respond favourably to these anti-Muslim rhetoric and actions of the BJP. As Hindutva poster boy, BJP heavyweight CT Ravi, who has termed the verdict as ‘personal loss, not that of our ideology’, suffered defeat in Chikkamgaluru. He played a key role in a Hindutva agitation for control of a shrine in the Bababudangiri Hills.
Another hardcore Hindutva acolyte BC Nagesh, the state’s minister of education, bit the dust at the hustings. Nagesh was the epicentre of every controversy in the state with a communal overtone, including the Hijabissue and saffronisation of school textbooks. He lost by more than 17,000 votes to Congress challenger K Shadakshari for the Tiptur Assembly seat in the Tumkur district.
PAN-INDIA PARTY DREAM LOST
The BJP’s ambitions of being viewed as a pan-Indian party have undoubtedly been dashed by the catastrophic setback in Karnataka. Karnataka, which was sometimes referred to as the BJP’s southern gateway, was seen by BJP leaders as the one state where its presence would signal its breakthrough into other southern states.
After Karnataka win, Congress president M. Mallikarjun Kharge rightly said those who wanted ‘Congress-Mukt Bharat’ ended up facing ‘BJP-Mukt Dakshin Bharat’.