Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Saturday reacted to his party winning the Karnataka Assembly elections and said, "Poor people defeated crony capitalists in Karnataka."
"Poor people defeated crony capitalists in Karnataka. We didn't fight this battle using hatred...," said Rahul.
On Saturday, a resurgent Congress appeared to be heading for a comfortable majority in Karnataka and on track to wrest power from the BJP in its lone southern citadel, which appears to have been hit by anti-incumbency. The show was meant to boost morale ahead of the Lok Sabha elections next year.
The most recent statistics from the Election Commission show that the party led by M Mallikarjun Kharge won 10 seats and was leading in another 126 segments. This is a lot more than the 113 votes needed for a simple majority in the House, which has 224 members.
Decisions were hung on May 10 and the counting of surveyed votes was taken up on Saturday.
The JD(S) led by former Chief Minister H D Deve Gowda, which was anticipated to play a key role in the event of a hung verdict, came out victorious in one seat and was leading in 19 other segments. The BJP, which won 104 seats in the previous Assembly elections, was ahead in 60 seats after four. Four segments were dominated by others.
Basavaraj Bommai, the current chief minister, acknowledged that despite the efforts of the party's leadership, the BJP was unable to establish itself.
"We have not been able to make the mark, inspite of a lot of effort put in by everyone, including the Prime Minister (Narendra Modi) and the workers of the party," he said.
"We will do a detailed analysis as the results conclude. We will take these results in our stride and try to reorganise the party for next year's Lok Sabha elections," he said.
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