By V.S. Karnic, IANS,
Bangalore : Beaten in all elections since 2004 in Karnataka, the Congress appears to lack the confidence to take on even a faction-ridden Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on its own in the Dec 18 elections to 25 legislative council seats.
The obvious beneficiary of this weakness is the Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) of former prime minister H.D. Deve Gowda, on whom luck seems to smile every time he is written off as irrelevant.
Fearing another electoral washout, the Congress has forged an alliance with the JD-S for the polls but is still debating whether to go for a joint campaign.
The state’s ruling BJP is confident that the recent dissidence against Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa led by mining magnate and Tourism Minister G. Janardhana Reddy would not affect the party’s prospects in the council polls.
Polling will be held in 23 constituencies. For the two remaining seats from Dakshina Kannada district, there are only two candidates, one each from the Congress and the BJP. They will be formally declared elected unopposed Dec 21 when vote count for the other seats is taken up.
The council has 75 members – 25 each elected by assembly and local bodies, seven each by graduates and teachers and 11 are nominated. Every two years, one third of the members retire as per statutory provisions.
Of the 25 seats that go to polls, the Congress had 19, the BJP four, JD-S one. The remaining seat is vacant.
The Congress has fielded candidates for the 19 seats while the JD-S is contesting eight seats with a ‘friendly fight’ between the two parties for two seats.
The Congress lost power in the state in the 2004 assembly elections, failed to regain it in the 2008 assembly polls, won only six of the 28 Lok Sabha seats in the April-May general elections and fared poorly in the two by-polls to the assembly in the last 18 months.
It therefore had little option but to agree to the JD-S’ terms as it feels it cannot match the BJP’s organisational and financial clout notwithstanding the recent dissidence.
The total number of voters in the Dec 18 polls is only around 99,000 and the BJP is confident of bagging the maximum number of seats.
Winning a majority of the 25 seats has become a matter of prestige not only for Yeddyurappa but also for the BJP as the party does not have a majority in the upper house.
At present, the Congress and the BJP have 28 seats each and the JD-S 12. Of the remaining seven, one is chairman of the council, Janata Dal-United has one and Independents three. Two seats from the legislative assembly quota are vacant.
With 19 of its members retiring, Congress has to retain all the seats and its alliance partner JD-S also has to put up an impressive show to prevent the BJP from gaining majority.
Congress and the JD-S have justified the alliance saying it would ‘prevent a split in secular votes’.
State Congress president R.V. Deshpande and former chief minister and JD-S state chief H.D. Kumaraswamy have said ‘secular’ forces should come together to halt ‘communal’ BJP’s growth in Karnataka.
They also alleged that the BJP would “resort to money power and corrupt practices” to grab majority in the upper house.
Yeddyurappa and other BJP leaders have dismissed the Congress-JD-S assertions as ‘baseless and a ruse to cover up their fear to fight the elections alone.’
“I have taken this (the alliance) as a challenge. I am confident my party will win most of the 25 seats because of the good work my government has done in the last one-and-a-half years,” Yeddyurappa has said.