Karnataka to vote on May 12: BJP gears up for attack on Congress's biggest bastion

NEW DELHI: The bell has rung for another BJP-Congress face-off with the Election Commission announcing a one-day poll in Karnataka on May 12 and the contest seen as a quarterfinal of sorts ahead of the assembly polls in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh later this year and the Lok Sabha election next year.
The Karnataka poll, the results of which will be announced on May 15, is already heated with BJP and Congress keenly aware of the importance of the prize: A loss will rob Congress of one of two major states it is still in office while BJP needs a win to regain the momentum it lost after SP and BSP came together to win two prestigious UP bypolls despite a saffron victory in Tripura.

Karnataka is also important for BJP as success here will mark a re-entry in south India by regaining a state it lost to Congress five years ago after a rebellion by its senior leader B S Yeddyurappa. In a turn of events, Yeddyurappa, who returned to BJP ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, is leading the party campaign while the party will bank on Prime Minister Narendra Modi as its main poll mascot.

Newly installed Congress chief Rahul Gandhi is campaigning hard in the state and the stakes are high for him as the party needs to prove that its success in running BJP close in Gujarat was not a flash in the pan due to local factors and prolonged incumbency of a saffron government. CM Siddaramaiah has raised the stakes by declaring the contest as one between “communalism and secularism”.

Karnataka will yet again test Congress’s ability to take on BJP as the record has favoured the saffronites since Modi became PM. As of now, Punjab is the only other major state it holds and retaining Karnataka is crucial to Congress’s claim to being the main anti-BJP force and Rahul’s credentials as the primary challenger to Modi, a bid facing a challenge from Mamata Banerjee and “federal front” proponents.

In Karnataka, the battleground issues are a medley of governance gripes, Hindutva, caste combinations and minority wooing. BJP has accused Siddaramaiah of seeking to “divide” Hindu society by proposing to delineate Lingayats as a separate religious minority though Congress claims it is a legitimate demand of the community. The state government’s decision to celebrate Tipu Sultan jayanti has resulted in a political scrum, with BJP accusing Congress of another divisive move and the secular-communal fault line heating up.

BJP is looking at Hindutva consolidation, apart from attacking Siddaramaiah’s governance record, to counter the caste combinations that Siddaramaiah is relying on. The CM, himself an OBC, is looking to leverage the backward vote in his favour. The Hindutva issues that BJP is raising include the charge that Congress has been soft in confronting controversial groups like the Popular Front of India and latching onto the CM’s comment, later amended, that “innocents” belonging to the minority community will be released from jail.