BENGALURU: Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai has a cause to celebrate, apart from crossing the milestone of one year in office, which is in about 10 days, as a BJP internal survey gives the party an upper hand in the 2023 Assembly elections.
If the polls were to be held now, BJP would win 104 seats, Congress a mere 70 seats and JDS around 20-plus seats, the survey states.
Other smaller parties and independents, including BSP, AIMIM and AAP, are expected to garner close to 20 seats.
For the party that will go into the polls without the ‘mighty’ former chief minister BS Yediyurappa, the survey shows the party has matured enough to ensure a victory without his leadership.
Sources said the survey indicated most of these positive responses are coming from the traditional support belts of BJP, like coastal Karnataka, Mumbai-Karnataka, Kalyana-Karnataka and Central Karnataka.
The saffron party is lagging in the Old Mysuru region.
While BJP has covered much ground even in traditional non-BJP districts like Bengaluru Rural, Ramanagara, Mandya, Hassan, Kolar, Mysuru Rural and Tumakuru, it is not enough to help the party win in these areas and the fight here is still between Congress and JDS.
The survey also pointed out that in traditional BJP strongholds where MLAs have been winning since 2008, incumbency will fail to dent their prospects.
Interestingly, the present government too has 104 BJP members, and the shortfall of 17 seats was filled after 14 MLAs from Congress and three from JDS defected to the saffron party. In all these 17 constituencies, there is no major wave in favour of BJP, the survey shows.
The source of relief for BJP is that a similar internal survey about eight months showed that BJP numbers would drop by over 40 seats to around 70-plus seats.
Considering that the numbers have been restored, the mood is jubilant within the party.
Congress, the main opposition in the state, was unprepared to exploit the weakness of the ruling party, the survey revealed.