New Delhi: Polling concluded in Karnataka to elect the 224-member Legislative Assembly with the southern state recording a voter turnout of 72 per cent till 5 pm. The counting of votes will take place on May 10. 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 voter turnout of 52.03 percent was recorded until 3 pm in 224 assembly constituencies in poll-bound Karnataka. The polling started at 7 am and ended at 6 pm.


According to the election commission, 37.25 percent of votes polled until 1 pm, 20.94 percent until 11 am, and 8.18 percent until 9 am.


A total of 3,632 candidates, with 707 from the incumbent BJP and 651 from the Congress and 1,720 Independents, besides a considerable number of JD(S) members are in the fray.


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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.


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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


Several pollsters predicted that the Congress may have an edge in Karnataka, which is BJP's southern citadel, in a hung assembly with a couple of them even projecting that the grand old party may get a majority on its own.


Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai, however, rejected the exit polls and asserted that his party will win with a clear majority