New Delhi: Karnataka Chief Minister Basavraj Bommai on Saturday said that BJP has conceded defeat in the Karnataka Assembly elections though the counting of the votes is still underway. He said, "We will take result in our stride, we will reorganize the party and come back in Lok Sabha election."
According to the Election Commission, Congress is leading in 125 seats, followed by BJP in 69 seats, JD(S) in 24, and others in 6.
The counting process began at 8 am across 36 centres throughout the state. The voting on May 10 witnessed a "record" turnout of 73.19 per cent, as citizens cast their votes to elect representatives for the 224-member Assembly.
BJP had emerged as the single largest party in the House in the 2018 election, winning 104 seats. In the 2018 polls, the Congress party won 80 seats.
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 saw a three-cornered fight between the incumbent BJP, an aggressive Congress and the Deve Gowda-led Janata Dal (Secular).
A total of 2,615 candidates were 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.
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.