How the Karnataka elections may play out

It’s early days but 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.