BJP WINS BENGALURU CIVIC POLLS AGAIN, SETBACK FOR CONGRESS
The saffron party netted 100 of the 198 seats, Congress bagged 76 wards
BENGALURU: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won the civic polls in the capital of Congress-ruled Karnataka on Tuesday following an assembly election rout two years ago, as it bucked the trend of parties in power in the state taking the reins of the local body.
The BJP netted 100 of the 198 seats up for grabs, as Bengaluru that’s battling a barrage of civic problems re-elected an incumbent party to the city council for the first time in three decades.
This was the third straight win in municipal polls for the BJP following successes in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan this month, as a high-decibel Congress campaign to wrest control of the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) while targeting its rival for five years of “misrule” came to naught.
“This mandate shows that the countdown has begun for (chief minister) Siddaramaiah and for the Congress,” said BJP leader and Union minister Ananth Kumar, amid euphoric celebrations by party workers in the city.
Sources in the BJP’s election war room told HT that the strategy to make Prime Minister Narendra Modi the party’s face in these polls and channelling the voter discourse towards national issues worked remarkably well.
“Of course we talked about local civic issues but our focus was to make people see what the central government can do to make Bengaluru a global city,” said one of them. “This shows that the Modi wave is still alive.”
A clutch of civic issues in Bengaluru had created a buzz around the municipal elections with activists and citizens taking to the streets over traffic woes, patchy roads, unreliable garbage disposal and polluted lakes.
The Congress, which came a distant second with just 76 seats despite holding power in Karnataka, seemed a divided house as the results came in.