Bengaluru: The Congress managed to win just 13 of the total 28 seats in Bengaluru, the biggest district in Karnataka in terms of assembly constituencies and the state’s seat of power, as against the 15 it won in 2018.
This year’s assembly polls took place in the backdrop of growing resentment in India’s IT capital, as the public endured crippling floods, roads riddled with potholes, eroding green cover, increasing traffic congestion and crumbling infrastructure under the BJP. Yet, the BJP managed to increase its seat share to 15. Though the final results are yet to be formally declared, these numbers are likely to remain the same.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had focussed a significant portion of his election campaigning in Bengaluru, which appears to have resonated with the city voters who are believed to back the BJP.
Former Congress state president Dinesh Gundu Rao retained Gandhi Nagar, winning with a margin of just 105 votes.
Bengaluru has 28 seats but only 26 went to the polls in 2018 as elections for Jayanagar and Rajarajeshwari Nagar were not held along with the others. The BJP managed just 11 of the 26 seats that year, while the Congress bagged 13 (winning in Jayanagar and Rajarajeshwari Nagar later that year). Former prime minister H.D. Deve Gowda’s Janata Dal (Secular) managed to win two seats.
But in the defection drama of 2019, the BJP’s strength increased to 15 as four legislators — three from the Congress and one from the JD(S) — joined the party.
Bengaluru, known world over as ‘the Silicon Valley of India’, the ‘garden city’ and ‘startup hub’, has become a template of urban ruin, according to observations made by the Supreme Court (SC) earlier this year.
“The campaign by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been a plus point for the BJP with which we will get an absolute majority,” Basavaraj Bommai had told reporters two days before the results were declared.
Karnataka, which voted on 10 May, saw a high octane contest between the Congress, BJP and the JD(S). The BJP considers the urban vote as one of its strongpoints, and in Bengaluru, which is dominated by Vokkaligas and other communities, the party has had a higher vote share and won all three Lok Sabha constituencies in the urban district in 2019.
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Voter turnout among state’s lowest
The voter turnout in Bengaluru this year was among the lowest in the state at just 54.53 per cent, against the state average of 72.67 per cent, Election Commission (EC) data shows. In the 2018 assembly polls, the turnout in Bengaluru was 54.76 per cent.
Questions were raised about the accuracy of the voter rolls as duplication is high in large urban centres across the city, according to Bangalore Political Action Committee (BPAC) and other citizen groups. A 2015 study by civic rights advocacy group Janaagraha of Delhi’s voter list had suggested that there could be flaws in the way electoral rolls are prepared in urban areas.
The BJP had been in power in the state since 2019 and had control over the city’s civic body — the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike, or BBMP — since 2010. However, it had not held elections for BBMP, which has been functioning without an elected council since September 2020. Opposition leaders called out the BJP over this, and even leaders from within the party had warned that the crumbling infrastructure and urban apathy would fuel an upset and likely have a bearing on the state polls.
The BJP-led government had completed the delimitation exercise and the number of wards in Bengaluru stand at 243 now, as against 198 earlier.
(Edited by Gitanjali Das)