The 2023 Karnataka Assembly Elections saw Congress emerge victorious with 135 seats pushing the BJP to a distant second with 65 seats. This is a decisive verdict given by the people with the Congress crossing 43% vote share, a good 7% more than the BJP.
Although the BJP has managed to retain its 2018 vote share, this is the worst ever performance shown by BJP election juggernaut in recent years.
There are many reasons for Congress’s win – heavy anti-incumbency, strong regional leadership, consolidation of tribal and Muslim votes, its 5 ‘guarantee’ manifesto, Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra through Karnataka, and so on.
But it is important to see why the BJP lost. Here are a few reasons:
1. The party has started believing its own mythology. ‘Modi hai toh mumkin hai’ is a great slogan. But to believe he can win any election is a stretch.
2. PM Modi is out of touch with reality. He keeps count of 91 slights and he thinks that matters to the voter. But the only number that matters to the electorate is the household income.
3. The BJP backed the wrong horse. Basavaraj Bommai does not have the pull to deliver a state. He can at best win his seat. BJP has failed to cultivate a strong face in Karnataka after Yediyurappa.
4. Hindutva has its limits. It may work in Coastal Karnataka but not in the entire state. Dialing up religious fervor might get counter productive in a state that prefers plurality.
5. Corruption can still swing elections. If people feel the leaders are making money when they are not, corruption can bring down governments.
6. Modi factor varies from state to state. His pull in Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh is way above Karnataka. What worked in the two states may not work elsewhere.
7. BJP’s campaign was below par. It lacked punch. Contrast it with the single-minded ‘40% commission sarkara’, PayCM, campaign of the Congress. The BJP was on the defensive from day 1.
8. The Big Three leaders took some rash calls in candidate selection. You can’t jettison MLAs wholesale and expect them to stay with you.
9. Double Engine Sarkar has ran out of steam. BJP needs a new theme for every election. Templates and toolkits have their expiry dates.
10. Arrogance doesn’t pay. The voter likes his leaders to be humble. When they lose their sense of balance, a rude shock or two is given to bring them back to senses.
Instead of focusing on what went wrong, we see over-enthusiastic BJP fanatics blaming the Karnataka people for their choice.
At the same time, a message is circulating among BJP supporters in which they are consoling themselves by claiming, “BJP lost by less than 100 votes in 29 constituencies and lost 23 seats by less than 200 votes. Altogether BJP lost 52 seats by very wafer-thin margin.”
This is absolutely false. We double-checked the results and discovered that only about 10 seats were won with a margin of around 1000 votes. 10 seats out of 224. Let that sink in. And one of these seats was won by BJP by 16 votes after much drama.
Circulating rubbish and not focusing on the real reasons can only hurt the BJP’s cause. It’ll be great if the cadres and leaders do some soul-searching. The Karnataka election was a shocker by Amit Shah’s high electoral standards.
It is high time the BJP wakes up and smells the coffee in the land of coffee!
(Anantha Narayan is a mining engineer turned management grad turned salesman turned copywriter turned entrepreneur turned consultant turned columnist. He is also the son of a former BJP National President.)
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