On May 13th, 2023, the Election Commission of India announced the results for the Karnataka Assembly election, marking a significant moment in the state’s political landscape. While the Congress party emerged as the single largest party, the post-election scenario brought about internal challenges and a power struggle within the party. The battle for the Chief Ministerial position between party state president DK Shiva Kumar and former CM Siddaramaiah created a power struggle that has yet to be resolved.
With the election results unveiled, the Congress party celebrated its position as the leading party, having secured 135 seats in the assembly. This victory placed them at the forefront, though not with an absolute majority. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) followed closely behind with 66 seats, and the Janata Dal (Secular) (JD-S) secured 19 seats, making it the third-largest party in the race.
Apart from seat allocations, analyzing the vote shares provides valuable insights into the support garnered by each party. The Congress party gained a vote share of approximately 42.88%, emerging as the frontrunner in terms of popularity among the electorate. The BJP secured 36% of the total votes, highlighting its significant voter base. The JD(S) obtained a respectable 13.29% vote share, reflecting its influence in certain regions. However, it is worth noting that the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI-M) and the Communist Party of India (CPI) collectively received less than 1% of the total votes, indicating a decline in their popularity.
The final projection by the Election Commission of India in it’s website shows that Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI-M) got only 0.6% vote share, in terms of votes, around 24,000 votes. And the Communist Party of India (CPI) got 0.02% vote share, which is around 8,000 Votes. But even after summing the votes of both the parties, didnt not touch 1/8th of the votes received by NOTA. In this election, the NOTA received almost 2.69 Lakh votes, that is 0.69% vote share.
Instead of introspecting the results, the communists leaders were busy in praising Congress publicly for defeating BJP, which stands at 2nd position with 36% Vote Share and with almost 1.4 Crores votes. But the point to be noted here is, compared to 2018 Election result, the BJP got more than 7 lakh votes this time. In case of CPI and CPI(M), both have lost the significant number of votes and left the vote share almost close to null. In 2018, CPI and CPI-M got 4871 and 81191 votes respectively, which is 0.01% and 0.22% of vote share. It clearly shows Communists parties were loosing the ground.
(Pradeep G is the State Secretary of BJP Tamil Nadu’s IT-DM Cell.)
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