Only the BSP, which contested in alliance with the JD(S), could win a seat – its candidate beat the Congress in Kollegal by 19,454 votes.
New Delhi: With the Congress, BJP and JD(S) grabbing virtually all the attention (and votes) in the Karnataka assembly elections, there was not much left over for other prominent parties. Many tried their luck, but only the Bahujan Samaj Party could register some success; in alliance with the JD(S), it won one seat.
The BSP contested 18 seats and one won – Kollegal – where its candidate N. Mahesh defeated the Congress’s A.R. Krishnamurthy by 19,454 votes. BSP supremo Mayawati had even campaigned with former Prime Minister and JD(S) chief H.D. Deve Gowda.
Samajwadi Party, the other prominent party from Uttar Pradesh, contested 27 seats in the Mysuru region. Party chief and former UP CM Akhilesh Yadav was initially rumoured to come for campaigning but didn’t. Eventually, forget a seat, the party failed to get even a notable number of votes.
Shiv Sena, the BJP’s warring ally in Maharashtra, also contested the polls under the leadership of Pramod Muthalik – the controversial chief of the extreme Right-wing group Sri Ram Sene – who had joined the party just before the elections. Shiv Sena contested 40 seats, mostly in the ‘Mumbai-Karnataka region’, with seemingly just one intent – to damage the BJP’s chances. But it couldn’t put up a fight, and received less than 1,000 votes in every constituency.
The BJP’s ally in Bihar, the Janata Dal (United), contested 28 seats in Karnataka. Bihar chief minister and JD(U) president Nitish Kumar even went to campaign for his party candidates. But the party performed terribly – on only one seat, Aland, did it stand third, and there too, it polled just over 2,000 votes, trailing the second-placed candidate by nearly 74,000 votes.
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has, for years, been trying hard to register its presence beyond Delhi and Punjab. At one time, it was gaining some traction, when people like former Lokayukta Santosh Hegde and Air Deccan founder Captain Gopinath were part of the party. But eventually, it all fizzled out – the party contested 29 seats, 11 of them in Bengaluru and the rest in north Karnataka. But its best performance came in Basavakalyan, where its candidate got a mere 1,747 votes.