In the wake of the Congress-JD(S)’s humiliating defeat in the Lok Sabha elections, a split in anti-BJP votes may have cost two candidates their seats in Karnataka.
The cases involving recognised parties were witnessed in two crucial seats. In Tumakuru, where former Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda contested, the defeat was due, in part, to the split of CPI and BSP votes.
The JD(S) patriarch lost to BJP’s GS Basavaraju by a margin of 13,339 votes -- only the second ever electoral loss for the party leader. The CPI candidate standing from the same constituency, N Shivanna, alone polled 17,227 votes. In addition, another 6,013 votes were won by KC Hanumantharaya, of the Bahujan Samaj Party, with whom the JD(S) had allied during Assembly elections in May 2018.
Notably, both the chiefs of CPI and BSP, D Raja and Mayawati respectively, had attended the swearing-in ceremony of Deve Gowda’s son, HD Kumaraswamy as the Karnataka Chief Minister.
According to reports, the veteran politician had ignored warnings from local Congress leadership of such a scenario occurring. They argued that if the former PM approached the parties himself, they would have withdrawn from the race and paved the way for Deve Gowda’s seventh Lok Sabha term.
Similarly, in Chamarajanagar, the difference between outgoing Congress MP R Dhruvanarayana and winning BJP candidate V Srinivas Prasad was a mere 1,817 votes. Here, the BSP candidate Shivakumara alone secured 87,631 votes.
Had the BSP and Congress agreed to a pre-poll understanding, the ruling alliance in the state would likely have added this seat to their meagre tally.
The Congress and the JD(S) now hold one seat each, down from a combined tally of 11 seats in 2014, when they contested as rivals. The BJP has won 25 out of the 28 seats in the state.
While the alliance partners have been decimated, the BJP has secured a 51.4% vote share without contesting in Mandya, where it successfully supported independent candidate Sumalatha Ambareesh.
This meant in most other seats, the BJP candidates won more than 50% of the votes in their respective constituencies.