Boost for alliance: Congress-JD(S) defeat BJP in its bastion Jayanagar

The coalition government in Karnataka snatched the Jayanagar assembly constituency from the BJP on Wednesday, making a serious dent in the saffron party’s bastion and sounding a warning signal for parliament elections.

As the two coalition partners – Congress and JD(S) – have already announced the formation of a pre-poll alliance, this victory came as a morale booster for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. It must be remembered that BJP had won this seat in 2013 and 2008.

The Jayanagar election in Bengaluru city had been countermanded following the death of BJP candidate BN Vijayakumar two days prior to the polls on May 12. Two-time winner Vijayakumar, who was popular in the constituency because of his amiable nature, accessibility and hard work, was expected to win the seat quite comfortably.

After much wrangling in the party, the BJP chose Prahlad Babu, Vijayakumar's brother as its candidate, to garner sympathy votes. BJP controls six out of the seven wards in Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike in this particular constituency and there were at least three aspirants for the seat. When their claims were ignored, two remained silent, while one corporator openly campaigned for the Congress.

The Congress received a further boost when JD(S) supremo HD Deve Gowda announced the withdrawal of his party candidate from the race, invoking ‘coalition dharma.’ This was the first sign of cooperation after the coalition government came to power on May 23.

The JD(S)’ gesture proved to be decisive for Congress candidate Soumya Reddy, as she defeated BJP’s Prahlad Babu by a narrow margin of 2,889 votes. She had maintained a healthy lead till the last two rounds when it suddenly dipped, but she managed to scrape through.

Soumya’s father, Ramalinga Reddy, who was home minister in the Siddaramaiah cabinet, has won from the neighbouring BTM layout for his sixth term in the Assembly. He had earlier represented Jayangar four times.

Apart from Dr Yatheendra, son of Siddaramaiah, Soumya was only one of four new batch of kith and kin of Congress leaders who had been favoured by the Congress high command with tickets.

Soumya and Ramalinga Reddy have reasons to be grateful to the JD(S), whose candidates had secured around 12,000 votes in the last two elections. The Congress also made sure that the Muslim votes were not ‘wasted’ in the constituency and they were channeled to its candidate.

Looking forward to the Lok Sabha polls, this development should seriously worry the BJP top brass. In the recently concluded assembly elections, the BJP won 104 seats (increasing its tally from 40), but fell seven short of the majority mark, which helped the Congress (78 seats) and JD(S) (37 seats) to come together and form the government.

After initial hiccups over ministry formation, the two parties seem to have settled down under HD Kumaraswamy’s chief ministership and with two victories at Rajarajeshwari Nagar and Jayanagar, the government is comfortably placed with 118 members supporting it.

The Election Commission is expected to soon announce by-elections to two assembly seats, Ramanagara vacated by Kumaraswamy (who had won from Channapatna also) and Bagalkot, from where Congress member, Siddunyame Gouda had been elected but died in a road accident.

Bye-elections may have to be held for three Lok Sabha seats as well, vacated by BJP’s BS Yeddyurappa and R Sriramulu and JD(S)’ CS Puttaraju. Puttaraju got elected to the Assembly and has become a minister.

The coalition partners have also started focusing on pegging down the BJP which had won 17 Lok Sabha seats to Congress’ nine and JD(S)’ two in 2014 elections. Together they polled 51.8% votes to BJP’s 43% and they believe that if they can ensure one-on-one fight with the BJP, they can win as many as 22 seats out of 28 at stake.

But, elections do not follow mathematical calculations and the results depend on several other factors. The BJP voters, by and large, are concentrated in Mumbai Karnataka, Central Karnataka, Hyderabad Karnataka and the coastal regions – which enables it to convert votes into more seats – while the Congress voters are spread across the state.

In southern Karnataka in around 12 Lok Sabha seats, the Congress and the JD(S) have been traditional rivals and it won’t be easy for them to demarcate constituencies to be contested. Besides, outside southern Karnataka, JD(S) has marginal presence and its transferable votes may not be sufficient to help Congress to defeat the BJP candidates.

If we look at 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP won 14 out of 17 seats by a margin of 80,000 and above, with Yeddyurappa winning by a margin of 3.65 lakh, Sadananda Gowda by 2.29 lakh and Ananth Kumar by 2.28 lakh votes.

On the other hand, the Congress won three seats by 1,500 to 9,000 votes, including Congress veteran Veerappa Moily, thanks to a triangular fight, without which they would have lost.

The performance of the Kumaraswamy-led government over the next 10 months will also surely have a bearing on the coming Lok Sabha elections.