Karnataka civic polls: Congress wins 982 seats, BSY finds results below expectation

The Congress was ahead of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as the counting began on Monday of votes cast for Karnataka's 105 Urban Local Bodies (ULBs), the State Election Commission (SEC) said.

The Congress was ahead by winning in 982 civic body seats across the state, while the BJP has won in 927 seats, according the results declared by the SEC on its website.

So far, results were declared in 2,171 seats of the total 2,709 where the ULB election was held on August 31.

BJP state president BS Yeddyurappa says that the results are below expectation. Meanwhile, JD(S) patriarch HD Deve Gowda says Congress and JD(S) will have a tie-up wherever the results are hung. He said it is not an indication of what is likely to happen in Lok Sabha. Yeddyurappa says BJP couldn’t perform as per the calculations due to coalition government. But he says that he is confident of saffron party's victory in 2019 Lok Sabha elections, reported News 18.

The Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) has so far won in 307 seats while Independents took another 277 seats, as of 12.30 pm.

Polling took place across the 2,633 wards of the state, spread over 29 city municipalities, 53 town municipalities and 23 town panchayats and in 135 wards of the three city corporations.

A record average of 67.5 % voter turnout was registered across the state for the civic polls.

In all, 8,340 candidates, including 2,306 from the Congress, 2,203 from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and 1,397 from the Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) are in the fray for the ULBs, while 814 contested from the city corporations, including 135 from Congress, 130 from BJP and 129 from JD-S.

In the event of a party not getting majority on its own in the election, Congress and JD-S have decided to forge a post-poll alliance to keep BJP out of power, similar to May 12 state Assembly election which threw up a hung verdict, a JD-S official told IANS earlier.

In the 2013 ULB elections held in 4,976 seats, the Congress had won 1,960 seats, while BJP and JD-S had won 905 seats each, while Independents bagged the remaining 1,206 seats.

with inputs from IANS