(LiveMint)
Opinion polls have started making their predictions ahead of the Karnataka elections next month. The latest one, conducted by India Today and Karvy Insights, predicts a hung assembly, with the Congress getting 90-101 seats and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) 78-86 seats in the 224-member assembly. The Janata Dal (Secular), or JD(S) is forecast to win most of the remaining seats, according to the poll.
Readers might recall that there were a couple of splits in the BJP in Karnataka prior to the assembly elections in 2013, following a series of corruption allegations against former chief minister B.S. Yeddyurappa. He left the BJP to form his own party called Karnataka Janata Paksha (KJP). B. Sriramulu, a member of Yeddyurappa’s cabinet, also broke away from the BJP to form his own party (called BSR Congress). These splits hurt the BJP hard in the 2013 elections, reducing it to 40 seats, tied with the JD(S) in second place. The Congress won a comfortable majority, giving Karnataka its first full-term government since 1985.
