Karnataka Elections: Hyderabad Karnataka goes with Congress. Was Mallikarjun Kharge a factor?

Congress workers celebrate at the party office after the party's decisive lead in the Karnataka Assembly elections, outside Rajiv Gandhi Bhavan in Ahmedabad (PTI Photo)

Kalyana Karnataka, previously Hyderabad Karnataka, has once again proved that it is a bellwether region and voted for the Congress, which kept its crucial seats and increased the tally from the region as the Grand Old Party made a strong comeback in the Karnataka assembly elections.

Keeping its 38-year tradition of throwing out the incumbent based on issues such as corruption and instability, the people of Karnataka restored the Congress, which gained a comfortable majority in the assembly.

Kalyana Karnataka, which has 40 seats in seven districts, increased the tally of the Congress from 21 in 2018 to 26, while the BJP lost five of its sitting MLAs as its tally came down from 15 to 10, and the Janata Dal (Secular) lost a seat in the region from four to three.

One stalwart of the Bharatiya Janata Party who took a beating was former minister B Sreeramulu, who lost from Ballari Rural to three-time MLA B Nagendra, 52, of the Congress.

And Gali Janardhan Reddy opened his account in Gangawati, winning the first seat for his new party Kalyana Rajya Pragathi Paksha after severing ties with the BJP last month.

Job factor

Despite its rejigged name, the former Hyderabad-Karnataka region is the most underdeveloped region in the country but it has improved over the past few years in terms of development indicators such as girl-child dropouts, child marriages, maternal mortality ratio and the infant mortality rate.

While four of the seven districts in the region voted in a similar pattern, the Congress made gains in Ballari, Raichur, Kalaburgi, Yadgir, Koppala compared to 2018 results and lost a two seats in Bidar, and one seat in Vijayanagar.

While a vicious cycle of severe drought, unemployment and poverty may have rendered it the most underdeveloped region, in a couple of crucial constituencies such as Chittapur, it was the unemployment plank that favoured Congress candidate Priyank Kharge.

Priyank Kharge, the son of Congress party president Mallikarjun Kharge, said the main issues that dominated the campaign this time were unemployment and corruption.

“Unlike the popular belief that youth are in favour of the saffron party, most of the youngsters are worried about their future. Lack of jobs is a big issue and they are looking to the Congress,” said Kharge Jr. “I have been vocal about the scams and have been fighting RSS and BJP for many years. So in the last eight months, they have targeted me but I am thankful that I have the blessings of the people.”

Hyderabad-Karnataka was renamed Kalyana Karnataka in 2019 but the special status granted to it through Article 371 (J) for reservation in education and recruitment is yet to show results. A BJP bastion in 2008, the Congress began to regain more than 50 percent of the seats in the previous two assembly elections.

Though North Karnataka, including Kittur Karnataka, has a sizable population of Lingayats compared with other regions of the state, they are almost matched by the combined numbers of Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Muslims.

Mallikarjun Kharge is a popular leader from this region, but he lost to his trusted lieutenant Umesh Gopaldev Jadhav, who switched to the BJP, from Gulbarga in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. However, Priyank continues to fly the Congress flag high in the area, winning from Chittapur, a seat reserved for the SC community, for the third time.

Caste-based equations, based on the reported voting patterns, did not change much. The much-hyped switch of Lingayat voters following the shift of former chief minister Jagadish Shettar and others from the BJP to the Congress, did not happen as the Hindutva-based cadre stuck to party colours and was not swayed by the charisma of the candidates. And the minority, muslim and backward classes stayed with Congress.