The Congress has registered a thumping victory in the tightly contested Karnataka Assembly Elections 2023. The victory in the southern state is not only a big boost for the party leadership, it will also certainly serve as glue to galvanise the Opposition led by the Congress to take on the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
The Congress party has swept a clear majority with 136 seats in the 224-member Karnataka Assembly, and the big task on hand for the party leadership now is to choose the next chief minister. The ruling BJP was confined to 65 seats, as the JDS aspired to be `King Maker’ in the case of hung assembly was pushed to 19 seats.
Besides hectic campaign by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah and BJP chief JP Nadda, several ministers were defeated and BJP lost in several of its strongholds.
In a major boost for the Congress party, state president D K Shivakumar swept Kanakapura with over 70 per cent votes. Shivakumar is among the candidates gunning for the chief ministerial berth.
Some in the BJP have already begun “soul searching” for reasons to which it can attribute its performance. Speaking to reporters, Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai said, “Despite the best efforts by PM Modi and cadres, we were not able to make a mark”. Make sense of the Karnataka Assembly election results with real-time analysis from our political editors and reporters.
Having completed the tough task of winning the election, the Congress would have wanted to take a sigh of relief, however, it now faces another daunting task of picking the CM face. The grand old party now has to choose between two of the veteran state leaders – Siddaramaiah or DK Shivakumar.
DK Shivkumar’s supporters believe that the leader played a pivotal role in getting Vokkalinga votes being shifted to Congress in Old Mysore region, hence he should be made the CM.
They are citing 1999 assembly elections when SM Krishna, who was the then state president of Congress, was made the CM due to parties penetration in the Vokkalinga votes.
