Karnataka Elections 2023: Congress workers garland an LPG gas cylinder and burn incense sticks near it, in Bengaluru's Rajarajeshwari Nagar area as voting continues in Karnataka. The party has on different occasion slammed ruling BJP for the rising inflation in the state and 'high prices' of essential daily commodities.
This comes as the voting continues in the state for the 224-member assembly two days after high-octane campaigning concluded on May 8.
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.
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