Congress gains 1.8%, BJP loses 13.9%TNN | May 9, 2013, 02.39 AM IST
The BJP would like to believe that it got decimated in Karnataka only because of the split in the party and former chief minister B S Yediyurappa's party Karnataka Janata Paksha (KJP) playing spoiler, but that is only a half-truth. A detailed analysis of vote shares shows that the BJP's share declined by a massive 13.9% from 2008 to settle at 20%. The KJP, on the other hand, won only 9.8% of the votes cast.
What that means is that the combined BJP-KJP tally in this election is still 4.1% less than the saffron party's vote in 2008 and almost 7% lower than the Congress' vote share of 36.5%. Interestingly, the Congress gained only 1.8% over its 2008 vote share and the JD(S) added a mere 1.1% to its share from fi ve years ago, but given the massive decline in the BJP's tally that was enough. In the process, the JD(S) not only matched the seat tally of the BJP, but even went just marginally ahead in terms of votes getting 20.1% of the total votes polled.
A region-wise analysis shows the BJP suffered the worst consequences of the split in the Bombay-Karnataka region in the northwest of the state, the Hyderabad-Karnataka region in the north-east, in Central Karnataka and in the south's Malnad area. The KJP picked up 10.3% , 14.2%, 19.8% and 16.8% respectively of the votes in these four regions. Had this been added to the BJP's tally, it would have been just behind the Congress in vote share in Bombay-Karnataka and Hyderabad-Karnataka and clearly ahead in Malnad. Between them, these three regions account for 104 seats. However, the BJP can't blame the split for its debacle in the coastal region consisting of the districts of Uttara and Dakshin Kannada and Udupi. Its seat tally dropped from 10 in 2008 to 3 this time in this part of the state because of a 7.2% decline in vote share. The KJP got only 2.5% of the votes here.
Similarly in Old Mysore, the largest region with 87 seats in the southern parts, BJP's vote share collapsed from 27.5% to just 16% now though the KJP won only 6.7% of the votes here. Apart from the KJP, another party that made a signifi cant impact as a minor player was the Badavara Shramikara Raitara Congress Party led by B Sriramulu, exaide of Sushma Swaraj and confi dant of the Reddy brothers of Bellary, and also a minister in the BJP government in Karnataka. While state-wide his party's vote share was just 2.7%, in Hyderabad-Karnataka, Sriramulu's home turf, it polled 8.4% of the votes and in central Karnataka it got 6.4%, enough to make a difference to the bigger picture.
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