BENGALURU: The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Wednesday announced that the upcoming Karnataka assembly elections will be conducted in a single phase, as was done in 2013 and 2018.
The over 5.21-crore electorate, who will include a significant number of first-time votes, will exercise their franchises on May 10 while the counting of votes for the 224-member assembly will take place on May 13.
Both the ruling BJP and the Congress party delegations in Karnataka had appealed to the ECI Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Rajiv Kumar during his last visit to the state to conduct the polls in a single phase. But the decision may be more disadvantageous for the BJP, which currently has a double-engine government at the Centre and the state.
A multi-phase election could have possibly helped it roll out remedial measures, even from the Centre, if the outcome of the exit polls of the first phase turned out to be negative.
Former Lok Sabha MP VS Ugrappa from the Congress party recalled one such famous instance.
"In 1985, after the first phase of polling was over the then Chief Minister Ramakrishna Hegde got the intelligence that the ruling Janata Party was trailing. In an additional manifesto, the party announced Rs 2 per kg rice, sari and dhoti sets at Rs 25 per unit. Eventually, the party won 139 assembly seats," he recalled.
Ugrappa welcomed the Election Commission's decision and said it will help in free and fair polling.
With the state regarded as the gateway to the South for the party, the BJP is also banking hugely on the charisma of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to overcome a possible anti-incumbency wave against the Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai-led government. The decision to hold the election in a single phase can handicap the party on this count too.
"Modi would have been campaigning extensively if the polling were in two phases and it would have had a cascading effect," another political analyst remarked.
The BJP had won 104 seats in the 2018 assembly polls.
The single-phase polling may also prove disadvantageous for the regional JD(S) party which has only two-star campaigners in former Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda and former Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy. It is perhaps to compensate for this that West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerji has promised to campaign for JD(S) in select seats at the invitation of Kumaraswamy.
Leader of the opposition in the Karnataka Legislative Council BK Hariprasad was also happy with the announcement.
"We welcome the move of the Election Commission of India(ECI) to hold the Karnataka assembly polls in a single phase polling on May 10. This will help to curtail the illegal use of money and muscle power. I appeal to the commission to conduct an impartial election," he said.
Single-phase polling is often the best first option as it is more convenient and cost-effective compared to multi-phase polling, where voting is conducted over several days or weeks. Multi-phase polling is usually conducted when it is difficult to manage the logistics of conducting voting across all constituencies on a single day, such as in areas with difficult terrains or security concerns.