Rising In the South

WITH SOUTH INDIA contributing over 50 Lok Sabha seats to the National Democratic Alliance’s (NDA) tally of 294, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s consistent focus on Kerala, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, and Karnataka in the run-up to the General Election has not gone in vain. Of these, 21 parliamentary seats came from Andhra Pradesh, where the N Chandrababu Naidu-led Telugu Desam Party (TDP) made a spectacular comeback, leading the NDA alliance to a historic sweep. TDP, BJP, and actor-politician Pawan Kalyan-led JanaSena Party (JSP) also bagged 164 Assembly seats in a House of 175, routing the YS Jagan Mohan Reddy-led Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party (YSRCP). YSRCP managed to win just four of the 25 Lok Sabha seats, in a reversal of the 2019 verdict where it had coasted to victory with 22 seats, leaving TDP with just three. This time round, TDP has in fact improved on its performance in 2014, when it had won 15 seats, with YSRCP winning eight and BJP two. TDP’s 16 Lok Sabha seats—along with BJP’s three seats and JSP’s two—have proved to be crucial to NDA, which is all set to form the government for the third consecutive term.

Karnataka, BJP’s gateway to the south, has reliably given the party 17 seats out of a total of 28 Lok Sabha constituencies in the state, with its alliance partner Janata Dal (Secular) winning two. “The people of Karnataka have clearly shown their trust in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s performance over Congress’ promises,” said state BJP President BY Vijayendra in a state­ment to the media on results day. “Despite the Congress party’s grand displays, evident misuse of power, and their guarantees campaign, the BJP-JD(S) alliance has won 19 seats. There is no reason for the Congress chief minister or any of their ministers to celebrate in Karnataka,” he said. BJP insiders say the party had hoped to win 21-22 seats, including Chikkodi and Bidar, where its veteran candidates lost to 20-somethings Priyanka Jarkiholi and Sagar Khandre. Hailing from political families, the two winners from Congress are among the youngest people to enter Parliament this time. In Raichur (ST), BJP’s incumbent MP Raja Amareshwar Naik lost to G Kumar Naik, a former IAS officer who made his political debut on a Congress ticket. BJP retained its hold over the coastal belt, Bengaluru, and Mumbai Karnataka (with the exception of Chikkodi), with Congress sweeping the Hyderabad Karnataka region. In fact, five out of its tally of nine seats—Bidar, Kalaburagi, Raichur, Koppal, and Ballari—came from the region, also known as Kalyana Karnataka, in a boost to All India Congress Committee President Mallikarjun Kharge, who hails from Kalaburagi. “It is a poor and arid region that has benefited the most from the Congress’ guarantees. We were sure we would do well. We had hoped to win some seats in the Old Mysore region but we had to face some surprise losses,” says B Nagendra, the state’s Scheduled Tribes welfare minister, speak­ing to Open. The Ballari (ST) MLA, who has come under fire for a scam linked to the death of an accounts superintendent from the Karnataka Maharshi Valmiki Sched­uled Tribes Development Corporation, is said to have ensured the defeat of BJP’s ST strongman B Sriramulu, the incumbent MP from Ballari.

Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, while admitting that the party’s performance in the state was not as expected, thanked party workers and voters for the big im­provement in the party’s Lok Sabha seats tally compared to 2019. “In 2019, we had won only one seat but this time, we got nine. Our vote share is 45.34 per cent, not even one per cent less than BJP’s vote share of 46.04 per cent,” he said. This is not the first time Siddaramaiah has presided over a middling performance by Congress in the Lok Sabha polls. In fact, there is a sense of déjà vu in the state, which had delivered the exact same verdict in 2014, during his first term as chief minister. Karnataka, which has steadfastly backed BJP in the General Elections even while it wasn’t the ruling party in the state, has now returned to the status quo of 2014 after delivering a landslide win to the saffron party in the 2019 polls. “BJP peaked in the state in 2019. Now, they can only lose seats. Perhaps they could have won one or two more seats had they picked the right candidates,” says Vinayak Bhat Muroor, editor of the nationalist Kannada daily Hosadigantha.

While it is true that BJP’s vote share has fallen sharply from 51.38 per cent in 2019 and JD(S)’ from 9.67 per cent to 5.72 per cent, the alliance has worked well on the ground to effect a consolidation of Lin­gayat and Vokkaliga votes. Lingayats, a dominant community that has tradition­ally been with BJP, have continued to back the party after the appointment of former Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa’s son, Vijayendra, as state president. The party’s drubbing in the 2023 Assembly polls is at­tributed partly to a negative reaction by Lingayats to Yediyurappa’s marginalisa­tion within the party. Vokkaligas, the oth­er dominant community in the state, have demonstrated a near-unshakeable faith in JD(S) despite party scion Prajwal Revanna’s arrest in an alleged sex scandal, with state President HD Kumaraswamy winning by 2.8 lakh votes from Mandya, where his son had lost in the last elec­tions. Party chief and former Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda’s son-in-law CN Manjunath, a cardiologist of repute, unseated DK Suresh, brother of Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar, in the latter’s supposed pocket borough of Bangalore Rural, winning by over 2.7 lakh votes. NDA’s sweep of the Vokkaliga heartland— Bangalore Rural, Tumkur, Kolar, Chikkaballapur, Mandya, and Mysore—and his own brother’s loss have come as a setback for Shivakumar, who has worked to build a Vokkaliga vote base for Congress. “The seamless vote transfer from JD(S) to BJP in seats like Mysore, Chitradurga, and Chikkaballapur has really helped the alliance surge ahead,” says senior JD(S) leader GT Deve Gowda. “A large section of society that has been critical of Con­gress’ guarantees has voted for us,” he adds. The regional party is said to be expecting at least one if not two, ministerial berths.

IN NEIGHBOURING TELANGANA, where BJP’s meteoric rise has come at the cost of K Chandrashekar Rao’s Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), it has tied with the ruling Congress. Both parties won eight seats each, with the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM)’s Asaduddin Owaisi bagging Hyderabad. BJP retained Adilabad, Karimnagar, Nizamabad, and Secunderabad, the four parliamentary seats it had won in 2019, also emerging victorious in four more—Mahbubnagar, Malkajgiri, Chevella and Medak. While Congress improved upon its tally of three seats in 2019, BRS had to contend with a crushing defeat for the second time in a year—after winning just 39 of the 119 Assembly seats in 2023—and secured third place in over a dozen constituencies. Adding insult to injury, the ruling Congress has wrested the Secunderabad Cantonment Assembly seat from BRS in the by-election held simultaneously with the Lok Sabha elections. “With Congress securing 40.1 per cent of the votes, followed by BJP with 34.9 per cent, BRS has lost its right to call itself the main Opposition party,” says Etela Rajender, the former BRS leader who won the Malkajgiri seat on a BJP ticket, speaking to Open. While Congress has retained its vote share—it had polled 39.4 per cent votes in the 2023 Assembly elections, winning 64 seats—BRS, which had secured 37.3 per cent of the votes last year, has been reduced to 16.7 per cent now. BRS’ votes have shifted en masse to BJP, which has tripled its vote share from just 13.9 per cent last year. “This is BJP’s fastest rise in any southern state,” says Rajender, who won by a margin of 3.91 lakh votes from Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy’s former constituency. “It is only a matter of time before BJP replaces Congress too. People have already realised that the party has not implemented even 10 per cent of the guaran­tees it promised to deliver within 100 days of coming to power.” Rajender had lost the Assembly polls from Huzurabad and Gajwel in 2023. M Raghunandan Rao, who had lost the Assembly polls from Dubbaka, won the Medak Lok Sabha seat and success­fully broke into one of BRS’ fortresses.

With this, NDA has presided over the decimation of not one but two regional parties in South India. Not too long ago, both YSRCP and BRS enjoyed massive mandates in their respective states, but they have now been reduced to being distant thirds. With BJP firmly establishing itself in the Telugu states—it had drawn a blank in Andhra Pradesh in 2019 and won four seats in Telangana—the notion of the north-south divide seems to have vanished. After all, a ‘North Indian party’ could not have won the Thrissur seat in Kerala, opening its account in the state after a long wait. Actor-turned-politician Suresh Gopi’s victory in a constituency with nearly 50 per cent minority votes is doubly significant for BJP because it has come despite the Congress-led United Democratic Front’s (UDF) near-clean sweep of the state for the second time. UDF has won 18 of 20 Lok Sabha seats this time, one less than its tally in 2019.

The Dravidian citadel of Tamil Nadu, however, seems to be impenetrable by the saffron party, which had predicted a dhar­mic renaissance in the state and tasked its young state president K Annamalai with winning several seats and boosting the party’s vote share in the state. However, not only BJP, but its alliancepartnersAIADMKandPMK, too, cameacropperastheruling DravidaMunnetraKazhagam(DMK)-ledalliancesweptall39seats. Annamalai lost from the Coimbatore Lok Sabha seat by a margin of over one lakh votes in a verdict that is sure to have shocked party seniors in Delhi who had reposed faith in his dynamic leadership. BJP had won the Kanniyakumari seat in the 2014 elections, but drew a blank in 2019, with its vote share falling from 5.5 per cent to 3.66 per cent. This time round, BJP’s vote share has shot up to double digits—a long-time dream for the party. With over 11 per cent of the votes, BJP has in fact outperformed Congress, which secured 10.80 per cent. Congress, however, won all nine seats that it contested. Of the 23 constituencies contested by BJP, it came second in nine—Coimbatore, Nilgiris, Chennai South, Chennai Central, Tirunelveli, Kanniyakumari, Tiruvallur, Vellore, and Madurai—in what is a major boost for the national party.

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