New Delhi: There is disquiet in the Karnataka Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) over its alliance with the Janata Dal (Secular). Former Karnataka chief minister and party leader D.V. Sadanand Gowda gave voice to it Saturday when he told ThePrint that the alliance would undermine BJP workers at the grassroots in Old Mysuru region.
The BJP high command, however, has a reason to fortify its position in the southern state, which elected 25 of the state’s total 28 candidates to the Lok Sabha in 2019. The Congress and JD(S), its two main rivals, had then won one seat each.
The BJP this year lost the Karnataka assembly polls, managing to secure only 66 of 224 seats as opposed to the Congress’ 135.
If the voting pattern of the 2023 Karnataka assembly elections was to hold in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP would win 18 Lok Sabha seats in alliance with the JD(S) while the Congress would go on to win 10, an analysis by ThePrint has found.
ThePrint’s analysis also noted that, without alliance with the JD(S), the BJP would manage only eight Lok Sabha seats in Karnataka — down by 17 from 2019 — if the assembly results are extrapolated to the Lok Sabha polls. It would need the JD(S)’s combined power in the remaining seats to beat Congress.
In these eight seats, the BJP had secured more votes than the Congress and JD(S) in the 2023 assembly polls, indicating that it would win the seats even without an alliance if the assembly poll voting trend was to continue for the Lok Sabha polls.
These seats include Dharwad (held by parliamentary affairs minister Pralhad Joshi), Udupi Chikmagalur (Union Minister of State Shobha Karandlaje), Bengaluru South (Tejasvi Surya) and Dakshina Kannada (Karnataka BJP chief Nalinkumar Kateel), among others.
ThePrint earlier reported that the JD(S) is hoping to secure Mandya, Hassan and Chikkaballapur parliamentary seats — all in the Old Mysuru region — apart from Bengaluru Rural, which is currently held by the Congress’ D.K. Suresh, brother of deputy chief minister D.K. Shivakumar.
It has, however, been observed that people vote differently — though not necessarily — in assembly and parliamentary elections, especially since Narendra Modi took national political centrestage in 2013.
For its analysis, ThePrint looked at the vote-share of political parties in each assembly segment and extrapolated it for each Lok Sabha constituency. It then added the votes polled by the BJP and the JD(S) in each assembly segment to extrapolate their combined tally in each Lok Sabha segment.
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Winners and losers
Extrapolation of the assembly poll data showed that while Congress’s Suresh would lose his Bengaluru Rural seat, his party would gain 10 others. All but one of these 10 seats fall in regions other than the Old Mysuru belt, where the Congress made significant inroads to win the assembly elections.
For the Congress, apart from Chamarajanagar in Old Mysuru, three seats each would come from Kalyana Karnataka region and Kittur Karnataka region, and one each from Chitradurga and Davangere from central Karnataka and Bengaluru Central from Bengaluru district.
The losers would include sitting Union Minister of State and BJP leader A. Narayanaswamy from Chitradurga, former Union Minister of State and BJP leader G.M. Siddeshwara from Davangere and former Union minister and BJP leader Srinivasa Prasad from Chamarajanagar, according to the analysis.
The BJP-JD(S) alliance would also bag all three Lok Sabha seats currently not held by the BJP, if the Kannadigas’ voting preferences follow the assembly poll trend.
In 2019, Hassan in southern Karnataka had gone to Prajwal Revanna, grandson of JD(S) supremo H.D. Deve Gowda. Bengaluru Rural had been won by Suresh, and Mandya was won by the sole independent MP from the state, Sumalatha Ambareesh, who was backed by the BJP against Nikhil Kumaraswamy, son of former Karnataka chief minister and JD(S) leader H.D. Kumaraswamy.
In the seats of Hassan and Tumkur, where JD(S) supremo Deve Gowda lost in 2019, the JD(S) had secured more votes than the other two national parties in the 2023 assembly election.
If the BJP and the JD(S) had had an alliance for the 2023 assembly elections, the two parties together would have defeated the Congress on 45 more seats, stealing its majority.
The alliance between the two parties came about four years after the BJP allegedly toppled the Congress-JD(S) coalition government led by Kumaraswamy in Karnataka. However, the huge victory of the Congress in the assembly polls is one of the major reasons that has drawn the BJP and JD(S) closer.
The Congress not only ate into the vote share of the BJP, its victory impacted the JD(S) more adversely. The BJP retained its 2018 vote share of 36 per cent in the 2023 state polls, but the JD(S)’ was reduced from around 18.3 per cent to 13.3 per cent.
When it came to number of seats, the BJP was reduced to 66 from 104 in the 2018 assembly polls and the JD(S) to a mere 19 from 37 earlier.
This is the second time that the BJP and JD(S) have come together since 2006.
While BJP is looking to retain most, if not all, of the 25 Lok Sabha seats it holds currently, the JD(S), which has a single seat, will be hoping to secure at least two to three more as part of the alliance.
The JD(S) wishes to contest from the four Lok Sabha seats of Hassan, Bengaluru Rural, Mandya and Chikkaballapur. When assembly elections are extrapolated for the Lok Sabha polls, the alliance would likely win all four, with JD(S) winning two on its own.
JD(S) set to gain more
Speaking about the alliance, political analyst professor Chambi Puranik, a former faculty member from the political science department at University of Mysore, said it is JD(S) that is set to gain more from the alliance than the BJP.
“Even if they (JD(S)) get more than two seats…maybe three or four…it will be a big morale boost. This (alliance) was the only choice left for the JD(S) to remain relevant. The party was not even invited for the (INDIA alliance’s) Bengaluru summit. Even during the swearing-in ceremony (of CM Siddaramaiah), the JD(S) was not invited,” he said, adding: “As such, they were not even willing to ally with the Congress (this time) because they had a bitter experience between 2018 and 2019.”
For the BJP, which has considerable support from the Lingayat community, the alliance might get its votes from the Vokkaliga belt of southern Karnataka.
“The JD(S) has 14 percent vote-share in the state, which is largely Vokkaliga vote… and the BJP will definitely gain out of that vote. In 2024, the Vokkaligas will not vote like they did in the 2023 assembly elections. The Vokkaligas had then voted for the Congress, hoping that Shivakumar would be made the CM,” said Puranik.
“Seeing the recent political rivalry between the Shivakumar and Siddaramaiah camps (in the Congress), I don’t think the Vokkaligas will vote for the Congress like they did in 2023,” he added.
The analyst believes that both the BJP and JD(S) can transfer their votes to each other, and the only issue could be JD(S)’ Muslim vote. This, he says, has now gone to the Congress after the 2023 assembly polls.
Karnataka votes differently
While the assembly election is the only latest data available to ascertain the impact on the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, Karnataka votes very differently in the general elections compared to assembly polls.
In fact, over the last three elections, the BJP has significantly performed better in terms of vote-share in the Lok Sabha polls, compared to the assembly elections.
In 2019, the party’s vote-share in the state increased by 15 per cent within a span of a few months after the 2018 assembly polls, in 2014 by 23 per cent and in 2009 by 8 per cent. Even in 2004, the BJP’s vote share saw a three per cent rise when the Lok Sabha and assembly polls were held simultaneously.
The reason for this, state-based political analyst Narendar Pani had explained to ThePrint, was that “Karnataka’s electorate has shown there’s a distinction between the national elections and state-level (polls)”.
Political analysts believe that the issues across elections remain different, and national leaders cannot fetch votes in local polls.
“They are different elections. Issues are different, therefore, people vote differently. You cannot expect prime ministers to get you votes in state elections. Similarly, you cannot expect state leaders to get you votes in national elections. Two different governments, two different elections, why should we vote the same way, is the thought,” Pani told ThePrint.
For the coming Lok Sabha elections, he said, who the PM candidate is will be important. “It will be a fresh decision for the people, and not a carry forward from the assembly election,” he added.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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