Karnataka Polls
Venugopalan
The poll battle in Karnataka is on peak. The State is going to polls on May 5. In a week long blame game, all the parties are putting their full strength to woo the voters. The political pundits are changing their predictions everyday and nobody is still sure that who will form the next government in the State. However, all the four major parties including the BJP, the Congress, JD(S) and the KJP of Yedyurappa have claimed to get full majority, but it will be decided only on May 8 when the counting of votes begins.
As far as the present political equations are concerned, the main fight is between the ruling BJP and the main opposition Congress. However, JD(S) and KJP are also strong in some pockets of the State, but they are expected to prove game spoilers for both the BJP and the Congress and certainly are not expected to get majority on their own. Even there is no chance for Yeddyurappa and HD Deve Gowda forming a government together. The political analysts feel the government will be formed either by the BJP or the Congress.
The Congress chances got slim since the Rahul Gandhi addressed some rallies in the State. His comment accusing the State BJP for ‘looting the State in five years is proving costly to the Congress, as people know that it is the Congress which is looting the nation for many decades. The large number of corruption charges against Congress and UPA leaders prove that it is the gang of looters in Delhi. The humiliating defeat of Congress under leadership of Rahul Gandhi in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh are also the fact which the people are asking.
Barely days before the State polls, the Congress Party is grappling with rebellion from dissatisfied party workers in at least 60 constituencies across Karnataka. Congress leaders have faced dissent from party workers since the ticket distribution process ran into rough weather.
The BJP, which was seen weak till some time back, has now emerged as the main contender. The analysts who were predicting a poor show by the BJP have changed their tune. Now they are predicting a better performance since the election rallies of Gujarat Chief Minister Shri Narendra Modi, who was in the State only for one day and on that day wherever he went a huge gathering of youth was seen cheering him.
Addressing a rally in Bengaluru on April 28 Shri Modi openly challenged the media and the political pundits for a debate on development in BJP ruled states vs the Congress ruled states. Even Karnataka, he said, has performed distinctively on various parameters of governance – the two recent awards by the Congress ruled Central Government are proof of the same. The best part of Modi’s speech was at the very beginning when he asked the Congress to reveal the face behind the ‘hand’ of the party who would be the Chief Ministerial candidate. The internal dynamics of the Congress are such that the party might even split on the issue of the Chief Minister. Can Karnataka really afford to elect such a party for the next five years?
The highlight of Modi’s speech in Bengaluru was that his articulation of the 2G scam on how the number of zeros in the 1 lakh 76 thousand crore rupees would reach 10 Janpath in New Delhi. The untold part of the story of the 2G scam has always been about the involvement of the supreme leader of the Congress and Modi has unveiled that with great subtlety.
The stunning speech of Modi in Bengaluru has left the political pundits befuddled. It has marked a new turning point for not only Karnataka politics but also the Opposition politics. How can the Congress and the intellectual brigade of New Delhi just get away with the ambiguous “inclusive” economic growth for all the specific points of governance issues raised by Modi? Karnataka, has now learned to question New Delhi about its incoherence and incompetence. Modi addressed another rally on May 2 in Mangalore.
Apart from veteran BJP leader Shri LK Advani, national president Shri Rajnath Singh, Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Smt Sushma Swaraj also addressed some rallies in the State. Addressing a gathering at Malleshwaram Grounds in Bengaluru, she said she was proud of the work that her party had done in the State. “The BJP government in Karnataka has worked hard for you,” she said. “There was a lot of fighting at first, I agree. That hurt us too to no end. We tried a lot to solve the problem. But at the end of it those who fought have left the party,” she said.
Hitting out at Yeddyurappa’s new party, the Karnataka Janatha Paksha, she said the party cannot form the Government in Karnataka. “The Janata Dal-Secular, on the other hand, helps the Congress at the Centre. Let us not forget that they stabbed us in the back five years back. Why would anyone want to vote for the Congress? They are corrupt, cannot tackle terrorism and have not given good governance since the past nine years. Would you want such a government in Karnataka also? The Congress has been breaking records in scams — the 2G, coal scams to name a few,” she said.
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