New Delhi: Karnataka has seen eight chief ministers since 2008, when the southern state became the first state to hold elections after the 2002 Delimitation Commission report redrawn the boundaries of constituencies.
However, during the last three elections, one out of four seats (out of 224 assembly seats) had the same result. More precisely, the electorate of 58 seats – 25 Congress, 23 BJP and 10 JD(S) – chose the same party in 2008, 2013 and 2018.
In its stronghold of southern Karnataka, the Janata Dal (Secular) has retained 10 seats in a row in the last three elections. All of them are from the Vokkaliga belt of the Old Mysore region.
In contrast, Congress and BJP have 8 and 4 seats respectively in Old Mysore.
HD Revanna, son of JD(S) patriarch HD Deve Gowda, BJP national general secretary CT Ravi and Congress state president DK Shivakumar are among the legislators who have won three consecutive terms from Old Mysuru constituency.
A closer look reveals that six of the JD(S)’s total of 10 seats come from Hassan and Mandya districts, considered the family strongholds of former prime minister HD Deve Gowda. Overall, JD(S) won 28, 40 and 37 seats in Karnataka in 2008, 2013 and 2018, according to Election Commission data.
Given the dominance of the Vokkaligas in Old Mysuru and some other areas, the BJP has fielded 42 candidates from the dominant community this time.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has visited Mysore eight times in the last nine years. Keeping Vokkaliga votes in mind, he had last year inaugurated a 108-foot statue of Nadaprabhu Kempegowda, the 16th-century chieftain of the Vijayanagara Empire, in Bengaluru.
“Any party that does not do well in old Mysuru and Mumbai-Karnataka or Hyderabad-Karnataka is not going to be able to get a majority of seats,” Sandeep Shastri, pro-vice-chancellor of Bengaluru’s Jain University, told ThePrint.
“If a party gets a majority of seats, it is because of a good performance in old Mysuru, as well as in Mumbai-Karnataka or Hyderabad-Karnataka. And this is the reason why BJP fell short of majority in 2008 and 2018.
Half seats locked in Bengaluru
Bengaluru, which has a significant Vokkaliga presence, falls in South Karnataka. But it is regarded as a separate division for its political character.
Home to 13 million people, Bengaluru is politically important as it sends 28 MLAs to the Karnataka Legislative Assembly. The BJP has been on a winning streak in 9 seats in the last three elections. The Congress is not far behind with 7, showing how both the national parties are firmly entrenched in their strongholds.
Out of 28 seats here, BJP won 11 in 2018 and Congress 13. Two went to the JD(S) account, while two seats did not go to polls at that time.
Former state Congress president Dinesh Gundu Rao, former Congress minister M. Krishnappa, BJP minister C.N. Ashwathnarayan and former BJP minister S. Suresh Kumar is among the MLAs who have won three consecutive terms from Bengaluru.
Read also: Analyzing strike rate in Karnataka elections, BJP and JD(S) beat Congress in direct contest
BJP dominance in coastal areas and Kittur-Karnataka
In the 2018 elections, where the BJP won 30 seats in Kittur-Karnataka, it won 16 seats in Coastal Karnataka. Both Kittur-Karnataka and the coastal region are considered BJP strongholds for different reasons.
Coastal Karnataka, comprising Udupi, Dakshina Kannada and Uttara Kannada districts, is often referred to as the “BJP’s Hindutva laboratory”. It was only in 2013 that the Congress managed to outperform the BJP in the region as the latter’s vote got split following BS Yediyurappa’s insurgency.
Of the 19 seats here, the BJP has retained only Sulia and Sirsi since 2008, while the Congress can claim only one such seat – Mangaluru.
In the Lingayat-dominated Kittur-Karnataka region, which has 50 seats, 6 seats – Raibag, Saundatti Yellamma, Shiggaon, Mudhol, Hubli-Dharwad-West, Hubli-Dharwad-Central – have been held by the BJP since 2008.
Congress dominance in Kalyan-Karnataka
Kalyan-Karnataka’s 41 seats have a mix of backward classes, Kurubas, Lingayats and minorities. In Karnataka, since 2008, the Congress has won a total of 25 seats consecutively, six of which are in this region. The BJP has only two such seats here (Aurad and Gulbarga South). Considered a Congress bastion, the party had won 20 seats from the region in 2018.
Of the 13 seats spread across Davanagere and Chitradurga districts in central Karnataka, the BJP won 10 in the last election. The voters of none of these seats voted for the BJP continuously in the last three elections.
The Congress has one such seat – Davanagere South – where 91-year-old five-time MLA Shamanur Shivashankarappa was given the ticket again in 2018.
candidate change
The same candidates had won 18 of the 25 seats held by the Congress since 2008. This year, the Congress is set to repeat all its MLAs in all these seats except Gokak, where it has fielded Mahantesh Kadadi, and Shivajinagar, where the candidate is Rizwan Arshad.
Shivashankarappa (Davanagere South), Karnataka Congress chief DK Shivakumar (Kanakapura), party’s working president Ishwara Khandre (Bhalki), former state Congress chief Dinesh Gundu Rao (Gandhinagar) belong to the group of legislators who have won at least one seat. Has recorded at least three consecutive wins. ,
Another such candidate is former Congressman Ramesh Jarkiholi, who is however now with the BJP. The Gokak MLA played a major role in the rebellion in 2019 that led to the fall of the Congress-JD(S) government.
In the other 7 seats as well, where the party won despite having different candidates, all Congress MLAs got election tickets except in the high-profile constituency of Varuna.
Former chief minister Siddaramaiah is contesting from the constituency, which was won by his son Yatindra in 2018. The Congress veteran, who won from Varuna in 2008 and 2013, is pitted against BJP’s V. Somanna.
Additionally, the three seats of Afzalpur, Bangarapet and Doddaballapur were retained by the Congress even after the sitting MLAs defected to the BJP at different points before the 2018 assembly elections.
In the BJP camp, CM Basavaraj Bommai (Shiggaon), CT Ravi (Chikmagalur), BS Yediyurappa (Shikaripura), CN Ashwathnarayan (Malleshwaram), Anand Singh (Vijayanagar), and R Ashok (Padmanabhanagar) are among the candidates who have three seats. or more terms as MLA of the same constituency.
Yediyurappa, however, won in 2013 on a Karnataka Janata Paksha (KJP) ticket. The former chief minister had formed the KJP in 2012 after parting ways with the BJP, but again merged it with the national party in 2014.
In 2013, when the BJP’s seat tally came down to 40, the KJP dented the national party’s prospects in at least 29 constituencies.
During the state elections in 2008, 2013 and 2018, 21 out of 23 BJP bastions had trusted the same candidate. The two exceptions were Hubli-Dharwad-West and Gulbarga South, from where Arvind Belad and Dattatreya Patil Revoor took charge. His father in the 2013 election.
This year, 5 out of 23 seats will not have incumbents for one reason or the other. While Arvind Bellad is fighting from Hubballi-Dharwad-East, and BN Vijay Kumar of Jaynagar passed away, Jagadish Shettar (Hubballi-Dharwad-Central) and S. Angara (Sulia) was dropped from the BJP list. Meanwhile, Yediyurappa stepped aside for his son BY Vijayendra in Shikaripura.
As for the JD(S), the regional party has won all 10 stronghold seats in southern Karnataka, including Old Mysore.
Seven seats – Arsikere, Gubbi, Holenarasipur, Krishnarajanagara, Magadi, Sakleshpur, Shravanabelagola – have seen only one candidate in the last three elections. JD(S) leaders HK Kumaraswamy (Sakleshpur) and HD Revanna (Holenarsipur) are among these candidates.
The other three seats of Ramanagaram, Maddur and Srirangapatna were retained by the JD(S) despite fielding different candidates.
Former CM HD Kumaraswamy had won Ramanagaram three times but vacated it after the 2018 election results as he decided to retain Channapatna. His wife Anita won the Ramanagaram bypoll by over 1 lakh votes.
After the death of MLA MS Siddaraju in 2008, the JD(S) retained Maddur – Siddaraju’s wife and DC Thammanna won the 2013 and 2018 state elections respectively. Thammanna will try to score a hat-trick of victories when the election results are out on May 13.
In Srirangapatna, AB Ramesh Bandisiddegowda switched to the Congress after winning the 2008 and 2013 elections, but was defeated by JD(S)’s Ravindra Srikantayya in 2018. Both are face to face again this year.
In these 10 seats, three sitting MLAs are not contesting on JD(S) ticket this time. Gubbi MLA SR Srinivas and Arsikere MLA KM Shivalinga Gowda, who won multiple times on JD(S) tickets, are Congress candidates.
In Ramanagaram, followed by Deve Gowda, his son Kumaraswamy and his daughter-in-law Anita, JD(S) patriarch Nikhil Kumaraswamy’s grandson is in the running to represent the constituency in the Karnataka Assembly.
(Edited by Tony Rae)