The Hindu : Janata Dal (U) support crucial for BJP

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Mar 27, 2004

Karnataka

Karnataka

Janata Dal (U) support crucial for BJP

By M. Madan Mohan

HUBLI, MARCH 26. The BJP is hardly in a position to take on the Congress in north Karnataka unless it is able to muster the support of the Janata Dal (U) in the forthcoming Assembly and parliamentary elections.

The region, which comprises the 12 districts of Belgaum and Gulbarga divisions, accounts for 95 seats in the 224-member Assembly and 12 of the 28 Lok Sabha seats from the State. The difference in the vote share of the Congress and the BJP in the 1999 Assembly and Lok Sabha elections was around 18 to 19 percentage points. The Congress secured 38.35 per cent of the valid votes (33.75 lakh) in the region to win 60 Assembly seats and 45.48 per cent of the valid votes (40.73 lakh) to win eight of Lok Sabha seats. The BJP got 20.44 per cent (17.99 lakh) and 26.49 per cent (23.64 lakh) of the valid votes in the Assembly and parliamentary elections to win 15 and three seats, respectively. The Janata Dal (U), which emerged as the third largest political group in the region, polled 16.08 per cent (14.15 lakh) of the valid votes to win nine Assembly seats and 17.21 per cent (15.36 lakh) of the votes to win one Lok Sabha seat.

In the 1998 Lok Sabha elections, the alliance between the BJP and the Lok Shakti of the late Ramakrishna Hegde, which later became the Janata Dal (U), trounced the Congress with the BJP (5) and the Lok Shakti (3) winning eight Lok Sabha seats with a combined vote share of 41.97 per cent as against the four seats won by the Congress with 33.37 per cent of the votes.

The BJP and the Janata Dal (U) paid the price for their internecine quarrel over the alliance throughout the election campaign in the 1999 elections. The alliance between the two parties, which was revived recently, has left both unhappy.

The BJP has already made a move to inherit the political legacy of Ramakrishna Hegde by playing up pro-Hegde sentiments at its election rallies. In the 1999 parliamentary elections, Congress candidates were able to secure more than half of the polled votes in four of the eight seats it won: Raichur, Bellary, Belgaum and Bagalkot. While the Opposition is hardly in a position to challenge the primacy of the Congress in Raichur, the good show in Bellary was mainly attributed to the candidature of the party President, Sonia Gandhi.

In Belgaum, the difference between the Congress (50.33) and the BJP (43.76) was around six percentage points. In Bagalkot, the difference between Congress (50.26 per cent) and the Janata Dal (U) (40.11 per cent) was around ten percentage points. In Gulbarga, the difference between the Congress (47.6 per cent) and the BJP (38.16 per cent) was around nine percentage points. It was a close race in Koppal with the Congress taking 46.09 per cent and the Janata Dal (U) 44.45 per cent of the votes. In Kanara, the Congress got 47.84 per cent and the BJP 46.42 per cent. Dharwad South is another Lok Sabha constituency where the difference between the Congress (46.24 per cent) and the Janata Dal-U (41.14 per cent) was not much. Of the three seats won by the BJP, the gap between it and the Congress was quite considerable in Bidar (BJP 47.99 per cent and Congress 27.16 per cent) and marginal in Dharwad North (BJP 47.94 per cent and Congress 42.18 per cent) and Bijapur (BJP 48.83 per cent and Congress 43.70 per cent).

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