City hands a bouquet of victories to BJP

City hands a bouquet of victories to BJP
DH News Service,Bangalore:
The State capital has flashed a virtual thumbs up to the saffron party which has handed a knockout blow to the Congress.

Of the total 28 seats in the City, the BJP won 17, while the Congress had to be satisfied with 10 and the JD(S) just one.

Several giants of the City Congress had to bite the dust. Former MLA K Chandrashekar lost in Basavanagudi to BJP’s Ravisubramanyam, a new entrant to electoral politics, M R Seetharam too lost in Malleswaram to a BJP lightweight, Dr C N Ashwath Narayan and R V Devaraj was humbled by the BJP’s Hemachandra Sagar in Chickpet. The Janata Dal (Secular) also had to suffer the ignominy of having its State Working President C Narayan-aswamy defeated by Krishna Byre Gowda of the Congress.

The Congress’s only solace was that six of its former MLAs were re-elected: Ramalinga Reddy (BTM Layout), V Somanna (Govindrajanagar), N L Narendra Babu (Mahalakshmi Layout), Dinesh Gundu Rao (Gandhinagar), Roshan Baig (Shivajinagar) and B Prasanna Kumar (Yelahanka). In 2004, the BJP had won just five seats, while the Congress had got 10 seats (Bangalore had 15 seats before delimitation). The JD(S) later in 2005 won the Chamarajpet bypoll which was necessitated by former CM and then sitting MLA, S M Krishna’s resignation.
The Congress, in fact, pinned high hopes on Bangalore, especially after the return of Krishna, who was considered as the urban face of the party, to the State politics after relinquishing gubernatorial Maharashtra Governor’s post.

Krishna had extensively campaigned in all the 28 constituencies. The party had boasted that the return of IT savvy former CM had rejuv-enated its cadres in the City. In a separate manifesto for Bang-alore, the party had not only promised better infrastructure, but also publicised the contr-ibution of Krishna-led Cong-ress government between 1999-2004. The Congress leaders had claimed that the very poor voter turnout in the City (44 per cent) would benefit their party. But all calculations of the party went awry. Among the BJP’s surprise winners were Shobha Karandlaje and Arvind Limbavali. Of the 28 new-elected legislators, 17 are first-time MLAs. Only one of the three women in the fray could make it past the post.

The immediate challenge before the BJP will be the controversial Sakrama scheme and the new Capital Value System of property tax system, which the governor has put on hold. The new government has to take a popular decision or it is sure to earn the wrath of citizens.