Karnataka poll date leak

“This should not have happened, I agree”, senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and Union Minister of Minority Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi told reporters after meeting the Election Commission (EC), along with Bhupender Yadav, Anil Baluni and other party leaders.

Surjewala also tagged the EC’s yesterday press note in his another tweet stating: “Intriguing events on “date leak” & BJP’s role appear on @ECI_India website”.

It was clearly an attempt to accuse the Congress government in Karnataka of being corrupt. The 224-member Assembly expires on May 28 in the state where the Congress is now in power, with 122 seats against the BJP’s 43.

The polls are being seen as politically crucial for Karnataka’s ruling Congress as well as the BJP. The JD (S), led by former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda, is the third player in the fray. Other than BJP and Congress, JD (S) will also be competing the polls. The saffron party received 19.9% of the votes, while the Congress took 36.6% of the popular vote.

There were about 2.18 lakh voters on an average in each of the 224 assembly constituencies. PM Modi, Congress chief Rahul Gandhi and BJP’s Amit Shah visited the state multiple times over the past few months. The party has also built a broad campaign around Hindutva themes. You all should know that the Congress, retaining Karnataka is an imperative at a time it has lost its grip on much of India. “The issues they consider for both polls (even when they are simultaneous) is different, but perhaps, electing the directly opposite party is not intentional”, he said. During the election campaign, both BJP and Congress have played the game of allegation and counter allegations, from practising communal politics to political murders, everything was opened and debated over during the campaigns. “On a pilot basis, VVPAT from one polling station in each assembly constituency will be randomly selected to count VVPAT paper slips for verification of the result obtained from the control unit”, Rawat said. They are anti-poor and anti-farmers. This decision, coming with a view on polls, could have huge ramifications as the Lingayats are a politically-influential community and form about 15% of the state’s population.

When it came to picking the most popular choice for chief minister, 45 percent chose incumbent chief minister Siddaramaiah as their first preference, 26 percent said BJP’s BS Yeddyurappa was their pick and only 13 percent preferred HD Kumaraswamy, the C-Fore survey said.

In the May 2013 assembly election, the Congress returned to power after almost a decade by winning 122 seats, 9 more than 213 required for a simple majority.