BENGALURU: Although the Congress could win 11 of the 14 Council seats from local bodies that it held, the party leadership is upbeat with the decent performance. The party even termed the results as a pointer to the 2023 Assembly polls claiming that the “people of Karnataka want change”.
The main opposition party has also managed to stop the ruling BJP from gaining full majority in the Upper House where certain controversial bills, including the anti-conversion Bill and love jihad Bill, will be presented. The Congress leaders put up an united front, keeping aside their personal difference, which reflected in the victories in several seats including Tumakuru and Belagavi.
The grand old party, which is hoping to come back to power in the state, seemingly has traction among the voters, cutting across the communities. Some of the party candidates in north Karnataka, hailing from the dominant Lingayat community, and those from the Vokkaliga community down south have won as other communities, especially the minorities, have voted in its favour.
KPCC working president Saleem Ahmed won by a good margin from the Dharwad dual-member seat, which gave the party a shot in the arm. “First, it was the people in the Hanagal bypolls, on Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai’s home turf, who gave the mandate and now the matured people, the elected representatives, have decided for a change in the state”, remarked KPCC president D K Shivakumar.
“We lost a few seats by a whisker and won in the dual-member seats by huge margins. The voting pattern has changed in the favour of the Congress”, he claimed. “We won three seats less, but this arithmetic cannot be applied when the ruling BJP used all its tactics, including hate campaign and misuse of the official machinery, to swallow the opposition, which has become its culture”, KPCC vice president Prof K E Radhakrishna remarked.