BBMP poll result: Siddaramaiah camp to blame city ministers for poor show
Bengaluru: Loyalists of Chief Minister Siddaramaiah are working overtime to prepare a strong defence that would be presented before the party high command that will seek to put the onus of the embarrassing defeat in the civic polls at the door of the city ministers.
One of the main points of the strategy is to highlight the narrow margin of votes, 39,000 votes, between the BJP and the Congress which indicates that the party fared better than the media says it has. In effect, the party increased its tally by 11 seats while the BJP lost the same number of seats.
“This shows that the party was not rejected as perceived by the media. The situation improved. You see, Bengaluru city is a BJP bastion. Be it 2013 assembly elections or 2014 parliament elections, BJP did well here. So, the party getting even 76 seats in a BJP bastion is no small achievement,” sources said.
The CM’s camp will say that the statements of a few leaders such as S.M. Krishna and Mallikarjun Kharge, 48 hours before the polling played a spoiler as it sent a negative message to Vokkaligas and Dalit voters. “This cost the party dearly,” a close associate of the CM said.
Chief Minister Siddaramaiah also ran a solo campaign during the elections while leaving it to the five ministers from the city to up the quotient, which they failed to do. “They could not improve the number of seats compared to the seats from their constituencies in the last corporation. All they did was ‘retain’ the tally.
If they had won seven out of 8 wards in the five constituencies we would have hot three figures,” the CM supporter said, while also saying they were prepared to name the leaders who did not co-operate with the chief minister during the campaign.
Splitting BBMP plan upset voters
The Congress insider said that the court wrangles over splitting the BBMP deeply upset the upper middle class voters who mistook the CM’s efforts to bring in a body that would better administer the city the wrong way. “Our attempt to postpone the election was done with good intent,” he said, while admitting that they were prepared to say that the Modi wave, did have a marginal impact on the vote.
