Bengaluru: Six days after a spectacular win for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the Lok Sabha elections in Karnataka, there was an equally stunning reversal of fortunes for the party in the state’s urban local body elections.
The BJP mopped up all but three of Karnataka’s 28 Lok Sabha seats in the general election, leaving just one each to the Congress and the Janata Dal (Secular), and one to an Independent.
A week later, the Congress swept up 509 of the 1,221 seats across city and town municipalities and town panchayats that voted in the urban local body elections 29 May. The BJP won 366 seats and the JD(S) 174. The JD(S) and the Congress, which formed a coalition after the 2018 assembly election, contested the civic polls separately.
The Congress won 42 per cent of the vote and the BJP 29 per cent. In the Lok Sabha elections, the BJP had garnered over 51 per cent of the vote, and the Congress 31 per cent.
Lacklustre showing
For a party that was still savouring its runaway Lok Sabha victory, the loss in BJP stalwart and former chief minister B.S. Yeddyurappa’s backyard of Shikaripura, Shimoga, was galling.
Out of the 23 wards here, the Congress won 12, and the BJP eight, with three wards going to Independents.
Elsewhere in the district, too, the BJP’s showing was lacklustre. In the Old Mysuru region, the BJP’s voteshare was nearly 45 per cent in the Lok Sabha polls but plummeted by half to around 22 per cent in the urban local body polls.
So what do the results of the urban local body polls tell us?
One, the electorate in Karnataka has rarely voted for the same party in elections to the assembly, Lok Sabha or local bodies, as the latest civic poll season shows.
Two, it is naive for a political party to assume that it can take victory for granted in subsequent elections after handing a crushing defeat to its rivals. There have been precedents in Karnataka where a party vanquished in one election came back to win another within months.
Three, voter behaviour cannot remain the same for elections to different bodies: The voter will not consider national security an issue in an urban local body election, where they will prioritise roads, electricity, drinking water and the like. The 2019 Lok Sabha elections, on the other hand, were billed as a presidential-type battle between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Congress chief Rahul Gandhi, and the voters made their choices accordingly.
Four, the Lok Sabha elections in Karnataka were two-sided fights between the BJP and the Congress in most seats. The Congress’ alliance partner, the JD(S), was a comparatively minor player. In the urban local body elections, though, all three parties fought separately and their respective strengths were on test.
Five, if assembly elections were to be held now or in a few months, there is no guarantee that the civic election results will be replicated. Again, the issues that drive assembly elections would not be the same as those at play during civic polls.
Time to shift gears
There were some over-zealous Congressmen who said the urban local body poll results proved the ‘Modi wave’ was all hype and it was actually the EVMs that may have helped the BJP win the Lok Sabha polls.
The local elections were conducted by the Karnataka state election commission, while Lok Sabha and assembly polls fall within the jurisdiction of the Election Commission of India.
But if the Congress indeed suspects the integrity of the Lok Sabha electoral exercise, nothing prevents it from making it an issue officially.
What impact will the results of the urban local body elections have on the H.D. Kumaraswamy dispensation? There has been speculation that the JD(S)-Congress government is set to collapse following the coalition’s humiliation in the Lok Sabha elections.
The urban local body election results may have put the brakes on the BJP’s efforts to topple the H.D. Kumaraswamy administration.
The state BJP, especially chief Yeddyurappa, was desperate to see the government fall so the party could take over. But the BJP high command does not seem to share the same enthusiasm, at least as of now, to achieve that end.
Chief Minister Kumaraswamy has been talking of expanding his cabinet to include disgruntled coalition MLAs, some of whom had threatened to quit the assembly and reduce the government to a minority.
The civic body election results have come as a big relief for the coalition, which has to now gets its focus back on governance after a long and bruising Lok Sabha election.
Also read: Congress, JD(S) set out to save coalition in Karnataka but that only widens cracks
I have commented on this issue earlier, especially how it has been blacked out by the national press. Though I live far from Karnataka I checked with my sources and got conflicting reports. Some said that the elections were conducted using EVMs while others claimed that ballot papers were used. So a bit confused!!