Consider this. Elections were held to 147 urban civic bodies to elect 3,697 representatives of the total 4,060 seats. While elections in the Dakshina Kannada district and the Bangalore city corporation were countermanded due to violence and an inadequate voters list respectively, the rest of the state stamped a third of the ballots in favour of the ruling Janata Dal (JD), a third for independent candidates, while the remaining chunk was shared between the BJP and the Congress—the two major opposition parties.
No party has secured a majority in any of the four city corporations of Mysore, Hubli-Dharwad, Belgaum and Gulbarga. The JD has succeeded in capturing only 35 municipal councils on its own while the Congress has romped home in 16 and the BJP has come through as the single largest party in 17 civic bodies without gaining majority in a single council. While convenient alliances have become the solution for consolidation of the three parties in there maining civic bodies, all three argue that the results are indeed a pointer to their growing popularity among the electorate.
Says Karnataka JD President C.M. Ibrahim: "The only issue in these elections was whether the state had accepted the administration of the 'son of the soil'. And our party gaining the highest percentage of the votes proves that the people have reiterated their faith in the Deve Gowda administration." He observes that it is wrong to conclude that the voters are unhappy with the JD government because the party had secured under 35 per cent of the seats that went to the polls. Says he with a logic only politics can justify: "The votes we didn'tpoll weren't polled by the Congress or the BJP either. Instead they went to independent candidates most of who are in fact JD rebels." He reveals that about 800 of the independent winners would associate with the JD, taking its tally to nearly 80 per cent of the total seats for which elections were held. "And this only reiterates the faith in the Dal."
In all fairness to the JD in the state, it must be said that its present performance in the urban bodies is reassuring as the JD has traditionally been considered a party of agriculturists. Deve Gowda's one year in office hasn't exactly brought about a green revolution—on the other hand, the state has been plagued by chronic power and water shortage and bad roads. Despite this, Ibrahim exudes confidence: "Going by the trend we will surely win all 28 Lok Sabha seats."
The results of the urban body polls have jolted the BJP which was hoping to establish a strong presence in a majority of the civic bodies besides capturing power in Mysore, Hubli-Dharwad and Mangalore city corporations. "Our performance in these elections should not be assessed in the context of our performance in the 1991 Lok Sabha elections or the 1994 assembly elections. A Lok Sabha election should be compared only with another Lok Sabha election," says Ananth Kumar, Karnataka BJP general secretary.
Kumar believes that the Lok Sabha polls will present a different picture because the factors at play will be larger, national issues—"an anti-establishment feeling, the desire against a hung Parliament and the choice to vote for the frontrunner".
Hope, a rare commodity in the Karnataka Congress till recently, is apparently beginning to grow in the party after a performance that has taken it ahead of the BJP in the civic polls. Says Mallikarjuna Kharge, a senior Congressman and CLP leader: "Whatever we have gained in these polls is an achievement that happened on its own. There is a lesson to be learnt from these elections. If we can sink our differences, personal equations and egos, we can definitely secure more seats than the JD in the Lok Sabha elections."
If anything, the state's civic polls have only highlighted the voters' inability to pass a definite verdict on the three parties who in turn will have to spruce up in the few months that separate the 10th Lok Sabha from the 11th. And at the moment, there is little to give an impression that they will be successful in the task.
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