High-voltage campaigning for Karnataka polls to end today

Bengaluru: The high voltage campaign for the May 10 Assembly elections in Karnataka will come to an end on Monday as all three major political parties in the state – BJP, Congress and JD(S) – are busy making their last pitch to woo the voters.

The top guns of all the major political parties were on a campaign blitz across the state in the past few days, even as the ruling BJP has been striving to break the 38-year-old pattern of alternating governments and retain its southern citadel.

The Congress on its part is working hard to wrest power from the BJP to give itself much-needed elbow room and momentum to position itself as the main opposition player in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

The JD(S) led by former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda was seen putting all its might into campaigning, wanting to emerge as “king” and not “kingmaker”, hoping to get the required numbers to form a government on its own.

“Government with full majority” seemed to be the favourite slogan of the leaders of all the political parties during the campaigning for the elections to the 224-member Assembly, as they stressed on getting a clear mandate to form a strong and stable government in the state.

While BJP’s campaign largely centralised with the focus being on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the ‘double-engine’ government, national issues and programmes or achievements of the union government coupled with a few from the state, the Congress’s by and large focused on local issues and was also run by its local leaders initially. However, its central leaders like AICC president Mallikarjun Kharge, Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra joined in subsequently.

JD(S) too ran a highly localised campaign, anchored solely by its leader H D Kumaraswamy, with party patriarch Deve Gowda too joining in, despite advanced age and related ailments.

Modi’s campaign juggernaut in the past one week since April 29 moved steadily ahead with as many as 18 mega public meetings and six road shows so far. The Prime Minister canvassed votes for BJP candidates across the state with the poll slogan ‘Ee Baariya Nirdhara, Bahumatada BJP Sarkara’ (This Time’s Decision: Majority BJP Government).