How the Karnataka elections may play out
The contours of the polls are clear. BJP will want to protect its Lingayat citadel, the Congress capitalise on corruption and the JDS retain its local dominance
Elections in India are always notoriously difficult to forecast and comment on, given the vagaries of religion, region, faith, caste and language. But even by those standards, Karnataka presents a difficult case. The state of 61 million people — born by piecing together contiguous regions of four distinct British-era provinces, Mysore, Hyderabad, Bombay and Madras — encapsulates a bouquet of drastic shifts in political equations in each of its six regions, granular caste-based voting patterns, and diverse language and faith dynamics.
Karnataka votes for its 224 assembly seats on May 10. This is a particularly crucial election because politics in the state has been mired in chaos over the last five years. In the 2018 assembly elections, the BJP emerged as the single-largest party with 104 seats, followed by the Congress with 78 and the Janata Dal (Secular) with 37 — only to find the two smaller parties join hands even before counting was officially over and stake claim to form the government. JD(S) leader HD Kumaraswamy became the chief minister, presiding over a government that ruled for 14 tumoultous months and which collapsed shortly after the opposition was vanquished in the 2019 general elections. BJP strongman BS Yediyurappa became the chief minister after 15-odd lawmakers resigned from the Congress and JD(S).. But in July 2021, he was asked to step down, and replaced by his one-time protege, Basavaraj Bommai.
How will the May 10 elections go? A lot will, of course, depend on the course the month-long campaign takes, but even in these early stages, the path to the majority mark of 113 is becoming clear. Of course, this is an uphill path — only once in the last two decades has a party crossed the majority mark on its own in the state.
First, the BJP. The party has never had a full majority on its own after any election, and never had a chief minister complete a full five-year term. This is also the first time since the late 1980s that the party is facing an election in the state without Yediyurappa being in the electoral fray, though the veteran leader has said he will campaign vigorously. Yediyurappa is the tallest leader of the dominant Lingayat community, which comprises 17% of the state’s population and influences the outcome in around 100 seats. It was his desertion from the party in 2013 that gave the Congress a majority government and pushed the BJP to just 40 seats, and his return ahead of the 2018 elections that blanked the Congress in the northern and central Karnataka regions.
The BJP’s strategy will be straightforward — protect its Lingayat citadel by leveraging Yediyurappa’s stature and his excellent ties with the powerful mutts, maximise its gains in the coastal Karnataka region where communal polarisation has deepened due to numerous sectarian conflicts and a simmering row over the hijab, and limit its losses elsewhere due to anti-incumbency and corruption. To this end, it is trying three approaches, all exemplified by its eleventh-hour tweak to the state’s reservation matrix. The first is an expansion into the old Mysuru region that traditionally witnesses bipolar contests between the Congress and the JD(S), as underlined by aggressive rallies by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and home minister Amit Shah. To this end, it has also increased the quota for the Vokkaligas, the dominant community in the south and a staunch backer of the JD(S). The second is eating into the Dalit community’s support by further slicing an already divided demographic. Its move to increase the scheduled caste quota while recommending internal sub-divisions is an attempt to win over smaller Dalit castes. The third is reminding people of how the Congress treated its Lingayat leaders of yesteryears, such as Veerendra Patil, poorly, while hiking the quota for the community in a symbolic move.
But there are downsides. In 2018, Yediyurappa rallied the Lingayats because he was the clear CM contender. Now with him out of the fray, it’s unclear whether there will be some fragmentation, especially because Bommai, though also Lingayat, doesn’t appear to pull the same weight. It is similarly not clear to what extent widespread corruption allegations against the Bommai government — encapsulated by the suicide of a government contractor earlier this year, and the arrest of a lawmaker who was caught accepting bribes — will damage the party. The reservation strategy is risky in a province where caste and political allegiances run deep, and can trigger counter-polarisation among Dalits, who are already divided between the so-called left-hand (who back the BJP) and right-hand (who back the Congress). And finally, in an otherwise disciplined party, infighting has erupted this time, forcing the party to take time in announcing its candidates.
The Congress has its own issues. The party has a presence across the state, but this is often not a blessing because it routinely polls more votes than it gets seats. But it’s largely stable 35% vote share — in a state where the winning party almost never crosses 40% — means it is always within striking distance of power. This time, it is upbeat that corruption and anti-incumbency will weigh the BJP down. But for the Congress to swell from its 70-75 seat mark to cross the majority, it needs a fraction of the Lingayat vote to break ranks. This, it believes, is possible due to bubbling discontent among some Lingayat sects over their quota classification (the impact of the quota hike is still not clear). The Congress wants to keep the focus on local governance and corruption because this can hurt the BJP in a state where 40% of the population lives in urban areas. It will hope to steer clear of national issues and avoid targeting PM Modi, whose last-minute campaign blitzkrieg in 2018 was seen as pushing the BJP over the 100-figure mark. And it will hope to pick up a sizable number of seats in areas where it is in direct contest with the JD(S).
But there are risks. Then CM Siddaramaiah’s 2018 gambit of minority status for Lingayats came a cropper so it’s unclear whether the Congress has any backing in the community. The much-vaunted Ahinda (a kannada acronym for Muslims, Dalits and backwards) strategy too failed the last time, mainly because it is too difficult to stitch together a coalition of scores of castes, and because the Hindulidavaru (backward) prong of the alliance collapsed. It risks a rout in the coastal Karnataka region if there is polarisation due to the rivalry between the BJP and newer outfits such as SDPI, the political wing of the now-banned PFI. And finally, with the rivalry between Siddaramaiah and Shivakumar still unresolved, it is unclear whether dissension will hobble the campaign.
The JD(S) in many ways is the key to this election. It is an anachronistic party in an era of 24*7 politics, with its dependence on old caste ties, the charisma of one family and a network of local vote-catchers. In the 30-odd seats of the old Mysuru region, the JD(S) is the crucial factor — if it endures, it can emerge kingmaker; if it collapses, it will play spoiler to either of the two national parties. But it will be a mistake to see the JD(S) as only a small player — after all, as HT’s analysis showed in 2018, apart from its 37 seats, the JD(S) played spoiler in another 43 — the largest in the central and Hyderabad Karnataka regions. It is this ability to pull votes based on local or caste allegiances that makes the JD(S) such an unpredictable factor.
By all accounts, the next 30 days will witness a blockbuster contest. The BJP will want to secure its southern foothold. The Congress will be desperate for a victory in a big, resource-rich state and cement its position as the principal Opposition pole. And the JD(S) will want to continue its tradition of punching above its weight.
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