When the Congress hurriedly entered into an alliance with the JD(S) to form the government in Karnataka after the 2018 Assembly elections threw a hung verdict, it had two objectives: to prevent the BJP from forming the government in the State and to trounce the BJP in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. It succeeded in realising the first objective, but has failed miserably in the second.

As the results of the LS elections poured in, exactly a year after the formation of the coalition government, the Congress learnt its bitterest political lesson. Aligning with one arch rival to beat another is not the best of strategies and does not work in the complex electoral battle zone. The alliance floundered so badly that both the Congress and the JD(S) have recorded their worst ever performance by winning just one seat each.

In the meantime, the BJP established itself firmly in the only southern State where it has any base by winning 25 of the 28 seats.

The BJP’s previous best performance in the State in a Lok Sabha election was in 1999 when it bagged 19 seats. In Assembly elections, the BJP’s best performance was in 2008 when it got 110 seats (out of 224). This was much before Narendra Modi appeared on the national scene. After Mr. Modi took over, the BJP’s performance fell to 17 Lok Sabha seats in 2014 and to 104 Assembly seats in 2018. Obviously, Mr. Modi’s influence seems to have worked much better this time in the State as it did in the rest of the country, routing the coalition and striking at the very roots of the government of Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy.

However, it was not all about the Modi factor. The BJP also had the advantage of facing the weakest ever Opposition in the form of the Congress-JD(S) alliance which appeared misleadingly formidable from the outside. The alliance was genuine in intent but farcical in practice. Workers of both parties resented it. Leaders in the faction-ridden Congress kept deriding it. The coalition government’s performance has hardly impressed the electorate. To expect a mutual transfer of votes under such circumstances would have been nothing short of a miracle. To add to the misery of the coalition, the leaders on both sides messed up with seat distribution. It appeared that they would have done much better had they chosen to contest on their own. The coalition government also upset the balance of power among the State’s dominant communities. As the Chief Minister is a Vokkaliga as also several powerful Ministers in his Cabinet, the rival Lingayat community began to feel politically insecure and threw its weight completely behind the BJP this time.

The BJP’s promise that a good performance in the Lok Sabha elections in the State would see the end of the coalition government (read Vokkaliga dominance) and that a BJP government led by Lingayat leader B.S. Yeddyurappa would take over also seemed to have mobilised Lingayats in favour of the BJP. The Congress rout in the Lingayat-dominated north Karnataka is complete. Even in the Hyderabad Karnataka region, where the Congress did relatively well in the 2018 Assembly elections, the party has drawn a blank. Congress leader M. Mallikarjun Kharge tasted defeat in Kalaburagi, for the first time in his nearly five-decade political career.

Worsening the prospects of the coalition, the Vokkaligas, who constituted the mainstay of the JD(S) support, moved away from the party as they perceived it to be all about the family politics of former Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda. Both Mr. Deve Gowda and his grandson Nikhil lost the battle in the Vokkaliga mainland of Tumakuru and Mandya.

Now, the fragile coalition government will come under further strain. It will be a Herculean task for both the Congress and JD(S) to keep their flock together as a reinvigorated BJP will go all out to poach legislators of the ruling combine.

It is not surprising, if stung by the sheer survival instinct, the JD(S) dumps the Congress and aligns with the BJP so that it remains in power and relevant. For the time being, the Congress seems to have lost yet another southern bastion that is unlikely to return to its fold soon.

(The writer is Associate Professor, Azim Premji University)