NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party on Saturday conceded defeat in a crucial regional election in Karnataka, losing its sole bastion in southern India.
The vote in the state, which is India’s technology hub and home to 65 million people, was the first of a series of crucial state polls seen as setting the tone for the general elections due in April and May 2024, when Modi will seek a third term.
The BJP had been in power in Karnataka since 2019 and campaigned hard to hold on to it — the only one out of southern India’s five states that was under its rule.
As the ballots were counted, it became clear that the opposition Congress party had won an overwhelming majority in the state, and Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai admitted the defeat.
HIGHLIGHTS
• Congress leader Rahul Gandhi told reporters in New Delhi that the party ‘did not fight this battle using the language of hate’ and fought it with love instead.
• Karnataka was the first of crucial polls setting tone for general elections in 2024.
“In spite of a lot of efforts put in by the prime minister and the BJP workers, we have not been able to make the mark,” he told reporters.
For Congress, the win is a major boost to its morale. The party has been on the margins of Indian politics since the rise of Modi’s nationalist BJP in 2014.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi — a scion of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, which has given India four prime ministers — has been seen as the main opponent to Modi’s rule. In March, he was convicted of defaming Modi and excluded from parliament.
Gandhi told reporters in New Delhi that the party “did not fight this battle using the language of hate” and fought it with love instead.
“People showed to the world that they prefer love,” he said.
The BJP’s overwhelming loss is seen as a “trailer for the 2024 general elections” and would galvanize opposition parties ahead of next year’s parliamentary vote, according to Prof. Shashi Shekhar Singh, a political scientist from Delhi University.
“The outcome is also a big boost to the morale of the opposition Congress party and other opposition parties who are working for some kind of consensus to take on the BJP unitedly and give a tough fight to Modi in the 2024 general elections,” he told Arab News.
“Karnataka has given a strong message to the BJP and Prime Minister Modi that the communal division and politics of polarization will not work in front of the real issues people are facing today.”
For political analyst Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, the poll showed that such a style of politics is being rejected and that Congress could capitalize on it to rebuild its position in Indian politics.
“It’s a fairly emphatic rejection of the politics of the BJP, and Congress has been given a decisive mandate,” he said.
“The victory of Congress will strengthen the position of the party within the opposition, and it might emerge as a fulcrum of opposition unity, provided the victory does not go to their head and they start thinking that they have become supreme.”
