'If We Don't Vote, We've No Rights To Criticise': Infosys Founder Narayana Murthy After Casting Vote In Bengaluru

Narayana Murthy said that it is the responsibility of the elders to sit with the young generation and educate them on the significance of voting, just as his parents did.

New Delhi: Infosys founder Narayana Murthy and his wife Sudha Murty cast their votes in Bengaluru as the polling for the high-stakes Assembly elections in Karnataka began early on Wednesday. 

After casting his vote, Narayana Murthy said that it is the responsibility of the elders to sit with the young generation and educate them on the significance of voting, just as his parents did.

Speaking to ANI, he said, "It is the responsibility of the elders to sit down with youngsters and advise them why voting is important. That's what my parents did."

"First, we vote and then we can say this is good, this is not good but if we don't do that then we don't have the right to criticise," he added.

Giving a message to the young voters, Narayana Murthy's wife Sudha Murthy said, "Please look at us. We are oldies but we get up at 6 o'clock, come here and vote. Please learn from us. Voting is a sacred part of democracy..."

The run-up to the polls witnessed a number of wars of words between the senior party leaders. While Prime Minister Narendra Modi slammed Congress in each of his rallies, Mallikarjun Kharge, Priyanka and Rahul Gandhi responded with corruption and unemployment charges against him. 

The state is seeing a three-cornered fight between the incumbent BJP, an aggressive Congress and the Deve Gowda-led Janata Dal (Secular), which would hope to play kingmaker again. 

A total of 2,615 candidates are in the fray. Karnataka has 224 constituencies spanning six regions -- Bengaluru, Central, Coastal, Hyderabad-Karnataka, Mumbai-Karnataka and Southern Karnataka or Old Mysore region. Mumbai-Karnataka and Southern Karnataka are the largest regions of the state and consist of 50 and 51 Assembly seats respectively. 

While BJP will hope to buck the 38-year trend of Karnataka never voting the incumbent party to power since 1985, Congress will look to wrest the state despite forming a government after the last election in 2018. 

In the 2018 election, Deve Gowda's son HD Kumaraswamy became the CM after JD(S) entered into a post-poll alliance with Congress. No party secured a majority in that election. However, the government lasted barely a year, with BJP weaning away MLAs, leading to the collapse of the JD(S)-Congress government in July 2019. BJP had emerged as the single largest party in the House in the 2018 election, winning 104 seats.