The JD(S) made no campaign promise, had no governance agenda. It has only one goal – of grabbing power and reviving the party.
Move over IPL. It is no longer the major TRP creator on small screens. Karnataka election results have turned out to be the best nail biting thriller in recent times. With 104 seats and 46.4% votes, the BJP has emerged as the single largest party but still falling short of eight seats for the majority to form a government.
Though the election to Karnataka Assembly was held in one phase, the campaign witnessed several phases. The first phase was development, with all parties promising the moon. The Congress claimed to have delivered prosperity to every one, but it needed another term. The BJP promised the same.
The JD(S) had no such promise and no pretentions of forming a government. It was content as kingmaker. JD(S) leader and former Prime Minister Deve Gowda was touted as a key player in the formation of the next government. Suddenly, his party became larger than life.
Strangely, JD (S) today appears to be the king – with no governance agenda other than coming to power and reviving the party.
But the last phase of campaign by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi took the wind out the sails of both Congress and the JD(S). But for Modi’s campaign and Amit shah’s road shows, the BJP’s seat tally could have been less than a hundred.
The BJP has lost nearly eight to ten seats with a margin of less than five to ten thousand votes. The low voter turnout in Bengaluru city, more than thirty five lakh voters did not vote it seems, has largely affected the vote and seat tally of the BJP.
While the BJP seems to have learned the lesson of unity, the Congress and the JD(S) are late to come together to forge a post-poll alliance to take advantage of BJP’s shortfall of eight seats. It is unlikely that such opportunist post-poll alliance will last long. Ironically, a party which was shunned by both Congress and the BJP, which polled just 18.6% votes and got just 37 seats, about one third of the winning party, has come very close to forming the government.
Whatever may be the terms of present understanding, the low voter support, lack of moral quotient and sins of past back-stabs will haunt the JD(S)-Congress tie up hurting both parties’ image in future. The JD(S) will have to tie up with the Congress for 2019 elections thus risking its chances of building bridges with the BJP. With the Rahul Gandhi-led weak Congress and a much weaker opposition coalition very unlikely to be anywhere near power in 2019, the JD(S) is writing its own obituary.
The author is a security and strategic affairs commentator, and former editor of ‘Organiser’.