Bengaluru: The appointment of Ram Madhav to oversee the long-delayed elections for Bengaluru city corporation underscores the importance of securing a victory and retaining control over India’s IT capital.
Following the success in the Maharashtra civic body elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) under Prime Minister Narendra Modi is leaving little to chance in securing a victory in the maiden Greater Bengaluru Authority (GBA) elections, one of India’s biggest urban centres and economic growth engines.
In a post Wednesday, Madhav said that local body elections are fought and won “purely on local agendas”, adding that they shall strive to win the “prestigious” elections.
“BBMP is very prestigious because it is a conglomerate of 5 corporations that include several towns and more than 120 villages besides the city of Bengaluru. With an electorate of over 9 million and 369 corporation wards, it is no less than an assembly battle for the state…,” he said.
In November last year, the GBA replaced the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), paving way from one single corporation to five for better management and streamlining civic services in Bengaluru.
It increased the number of wards from the earlier 198 to 369 and also has provisions to expand the boundaries of the city corporation from around 800 sq km currently to almost 1,400 sq km to include localities, towns and villages lying in the city’s outer periphery.
As the nerve centre of Karnataka and home to nearly a quarter of the state’s population, Bengaluru remains a top political priority for the BJP and its national leadership. The city accounts for a significant chunk of India’s over $200 billion IT exports, considered a major R&D centre, startup and aviation hub, but has been in the news for all the wrong reasons.
Its crumbling infrastructure, widespread corruption and the Siddaramaiah-led Congress government’s management–or mismanagement–of the city has been used by the BJP to attack the three-year administration.
The BJP and its ally, the Janata Dal (Secular) or the JD(S), have accused Siddaramaiah and his deputy D.K.Shivakumar as the reason for this degradation.
Shivakumar, as Bengaluru in charge minister, has proposed to build a 40km tunnel road at a cost of Rs 40,000 crore, Rs 500 crore for a skydeck, double decker roads—dubbed as ‘vanity projects’—that overlooks fixing potholes, laying good roads, easing congestion, completing the metro and other measures to improve the quality of living for 14 million residents.
The Siddaramaiah government, in turn, has argued that lack of funds to ‘develop’ Bengaluru due to reduced share of central taxes to states, decline in cooperative federalism and imposition of Hindi has turned the metropolis to a platform for political clashes.
Though the BJP being in power in the corporation has done little to help ease Bengaluru’s problems, it has prioritised the civic polls for a multitude of reasons.
Karnataka is one of the only strongholds of the BJP in these parts and the region is considered as the ‘gateway to the south’. A win would give it a major boost ahead of the polls in Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Puducherry, political observers said.
Also Read: With SC’s Bengaluru civic poll deadline, Karnataka’s Congress govt set to face crucial test
‘Control equivalent to state’
There are over 88.41 lakh voters enrolled for the GBA polls, according to the latest voter draft list. Polling will be held after 25 May.
“The GBA is very important for us. After the Mumbai elections, the next target is winning the five corporations in Bengaluru. If you gain control of Bengaluru, it’s like holding the reins of the entire state,” BJP’s M.Goutham Kumar told ThePrint.
Kumar was the last mayor of the erstwhile BBMP whose term ended in September 2020.
Apart from the prestige, Bengaluru presents the BJP with considerable advantages. Since the number of wards have nearly doubled, all political parties can give opportunities to more of its workers and retain people rather than lose them to rivals.
Despite being reduced from 104 to 66 assembly seats in 2023, the party has had a good track record in Bengaluru. Of the 28 assembly seats in the city, the BJP won 16 and reduced the Congress to just 12. More specifically, it got 46.44 percent of the vote share as against 40.72 percent of the Congress. In the 2024 general elections, the BJP won all four parliamentary seats in Bengaluru.
“If the people want good work, development of Bengaluru, they should vote for Congress. If they just want god, religion and BJP’s lies, then they can vote for them. Can the BJP claim even one achievement in its term between 2010 and 2020? They just left the city with more debts,” Transport Minister Ramalinga Reddy told ThePrint.
The state election commission has announced that the upcoming polls would be conducted using ballot papers, a move criticised by the BJP.
On Tuesday, Karnataka Minister Priyank Kharge called out the BJP for dubbing the ballot paper move as a sign of economic and technological backwardness. He went on to wonder whether advanced democracies such as Japan were “underdeveloped” and “tech-weak” going by that yardstick.
BJP claims that going back to ballot papers is a sign of economic and technological backwardness.
By that logic, are the USA, Germany, Japan, UK, France and several other advanced democracies “underdeveloped” and “tech-weak” simply because they continue to use paper ballots and…
— Priyank Kharge / ಪ್ರಿಯಾಂಕ್ ಖರ್ಗೆ (@PriyankKharge) January 20, 2026
For the BJP, a victory would give them another opportunity to corner Rahul Gandhi and the Congress argument regarding voter list and EVM (electronic voting machine) manipulation after election defeats.
Last August, Rahul launched the ‘Vote Chori’ campaign from Bengaluru, alleging significant voter fraud in Mahadevapura, a large constituency which houses major IT companies as well as hides the city’s dark underbelly.
The Mahadevapura findings gave the Congress and its allies with seemingly tangible evidence of alleged voter list manipulation, particularly after previous failed attempts to corner the BJP on EVM ‘fraud’.
One of the election issues is illegal Bangladeshi immigrants even as the Congress government has carried out crackdowns. The BJP accuses the ruling party of sheltering them as well as absorbing them in sectors like waste management in Bengaluru. The city houses a sizable number of migrants–white and blue collar–who work in IT, aviation and other corporations as well as the low-skilled engaged in menial services.
A section of the BJP had lent its support to pro-Kannada outfits, who contend that surveys could possibly reveal migrant-heavy localities electing non-natives as their representatives.
Also Read: Whose survey is it anyway? Congress, BJP lock horns over report on Karnataka voters’ trust in EVMs
Congress card
The BJP believes that Bengaluru, although a largely Vokkaliga-heavy city, will vote without much consideration to the Congress government’s guarantees. Shivakumar, a Vokkaliga, has been trying to mobilise support from the community with the promise that he would replace Siddaramaiah as the CM.
But the party’s good election track record as well as alliance with the JD(S) can help it negate Shivakumar’s influence.
“There are some border areas like Yeshwanthpura, Dasarahalli and other places that have a high concentration of Vokkaligas…few parts they (Vokkaligas) definitely have some influence. But most of urban Vokkaliga voters have been in favour of the BJP,” a senior BJP leader told ThePrint.
Though the two allies are yet to clarify on their positions on their alliance plans for the upcoming GBA polls, the JD(S) is eyeing to regain lost ground in Bengaluru and other parts. It has lost significant ground in Bengaluru over the last decade, including K.Gopalaiah to the BJP in 2019 defection drama and Zameer Ahmed Khan joining the Congress. In fact, the JD(S) is without elected representatives in Bengaluru.
But the BJP hopes that its alliance, much like in Bengaluru Rural in the Lok Sabha polls, will give it the required support from the Vokkaligas, who largely are land-owning class in the capital.
To mitigate the high cost of its poll guarantees, the Congress government has raised prices of commodities and essential services to raise capital.
“Whatever they have done is against all sections of society. Everything from increasing prices for water, power, property taxes, petrol… There is also cancellation of BPL cards, raising cost of public transportation, additional costs for e-Khata…,” Ashwath Narayan, a former BJP deputy CM and the MLA from Malleshwaram, told ThePrint.
But, the BJP is wary of the recent measures taken by the government, accusing it of redrawing ward boundaries to its own benefit and split party strongholds.
“They have gone for ballot papers, preparing their own voters list and misuse the state machinery to manipulate voters,” Narayan said. “All these are dangerous precedents.”
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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