Karnataka Elections 2023: 8.26% Voter Turnout Recorded Till 9 AM

A voter turnout of 8.18 percent was recorded till 9 am in Karnataka assembly elections, as per official Election Commission data.

Karnataka Elections 2023: Polling is underway in the southern state of Karnataka to choose the 224-member legislative assembly. Voters are coming out to exercise their franchise in their respective constituencies. A voter turnout of 8.26 per cent per cent was recorded till 9 AM in Karnataka, as per official Election Commission data. The political parties, especially BJP and Congress did numerous mega rallies and massive roadshows in the state during the campaigning period to woo the voters.

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 the 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.