As the Congress inching towards a victory in Karnataka, the workers of the grand old party started chanting slogans at the party office in Bengaluru.
As votes for the Karnataka assembly elections are being counted, Congress has crossed the halfway point and is significantly ahead of the ruling BJP in early trends.
Polling finished up in Karnataka to choose the 224-member Legislative Assembly on May 10 with the southern state recording a voter turnout of 72% till 5 pm. The incumbent BJP, an aggressive Congress, and the Janata Dal (Secular) led by Deve Gowda, which would like to play kingmaker once more, are the three sides in the state's fight.
There are a total of 3,632 candidates in the race, including a significant number of JD(S) members, 707 from the BJP, 651 from the Congress, and 1,720 Independents.
There are 224 constituencies in Karnataka, which are divided into six regions: Bengaluru, Central, Coastal, Hyderabad-Karnataka, Mumbai-Karnataka, and Southern Karnataka, also known as the Old Mysore region. Mumbai-Karnataka and Southern Karnataka are the largest regions of the state and comprise 50 and 51 Assembly seats separately.
The Congress seeks to wrest control of the state from the BJP, which is attempting to break a 38-year pattern in which Karnataka has never elected an incumbent party to power since 1985. HD Kumaraswamy, Deve Gowda's son, was elected as the chief minister in the 2018 election after JD(S) and Congress formed an alliance after the election. In that election, no party won a majority.
However, the JD(S)-Congress government collapsed in July 2019 after only a year in office thanks to the BJP's removal of MLAs. In the 2018 election, the BJP had won 104 seats, making it the largest party in the House.
Several pollsters anticipated that the Congress might have an edge in Karnataka, which is the BJP's southern bastion, in a hung assembly with a couple of them in any event, projecting that the grand old party might get a majority all alone.
Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai, nonetheless, dismissed the exit polls and stated that his party will win with a clear majority.
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