Decoding the Karnataka Assembly Elections 2018

If we look at all the Chief Minister Candidates of all the three Political Parties, non had the moral standing to ask for votes based on their Chief Ministerial Candidate. Hence all were placed on the same platter. In a situation like this, I don’t think any political party could have asked for a better result. Since BJP and Congress were both National Parties, both got better number when compared to JDS. The whole election was not fought on any development grounds but on grounds of Caste, Religion and Cash for votes. Some places like in Coastal belt it was Religion which mattered most. In places like middle and north Karnataka, it was Lingayath Caste which played the role. In south Karnataka, other than Bengaluru, it was Vokkaliga Caste. Since Bengaluru people were a more confused lot, they never came to vote itself. Cash for votes played a major role for the final win, in majority of Assemblies.

In the Karnataka assembly elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) with 104 seats emerged as the single largest party in the state but failed to cross the half-way mark of 112 in the 224-member assembly. The Indian National Congress is at the second position with 78 seats while the Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) became the third party with 38 seats

We all saw what happened in the past tense week. Each and every hour, we use to hear a different story. Once it was that some of the MLAs, are trying to jump to other party. Hence they were taken to different places and literally locked up. Hangama at the Governors residence. Knocking the door of the Supreme Court at 2 AM (which never bothers when some innocent are locked up in prisons). Finally we all thought that there will be a big ruckus in the Assembly. But somehow either because of the reality of numbers or because the MLAs wanted to show some maturity in Assembly, there was absolute silence in Assembly. Exiting Chief Minister Yeddyurappa tried to incite emotions similar to our Ex Prime Minster Atal Bihari Vajpayee in his exiting speech in 1996.

The resort trip, the rumours of poaching of MLAs, 100 Crores per MLA, Central leadership of both the parties did everything to see to it that there government is installed in Karnataka. But finally what worked was how they managed the numbers not either the Pseudo secular agenda or Right wing agenda.

One thing is for sure this elections in Karnataka, has shown what happens at Voter level, Assembly level and Government level. It’s all cash and numbers. The one who has Cash, Caste, Religion and Numbers will win the hearts of the people to become a MLA of that Assembly. One who has Numbers and Cash will win the hearts of the MLAs to become a Chief Minister.

There was time when they used to call Cash in Politics, Number game in Politics, Caste in Politics and Religion in Politics as loss of moral values in Politics, now it is called as “Chanakya neethi”.