Karnataka assembly polls sees voter turnout of 72.67 per cent
Bengaluru (PTI): Karnataka recorded a voter turnout of 72.67 per cent in the Assembly elections, which is slightly above the previous polls in 2018.
Several pollsters have predicted that the Congress may have an edge in Karnataka, which is BJP's southern citadel, in a hung assembly with a couple of them even projecting that the grand old party may get a majority on its own.
According to an Election Commission release late last night, the voter turnout stood at 72.67 per cent, excluding the postal ballots and home voting.
Chikkaballapur district registered the highest voter turnout at 85.83 percent followed by Ramanagaram at 84.98 per cent, it said.
Counting of votes for the 224-member Assembly for which elections were held on Wednesday, will be taken up on May 13.
"Largely peaceful voting in all 224 Assembly constituencies in Karnataka, and no repoll indicated in any of the 58,545 polling stations," the Election Commission(EC) said on Wednesday.
Karnataka recorded 72.44 per cent voter turnout in the 2018 Assembly polls which had thrown up a hung assembly with the BJP emerging as the single largest party with 104 seats, falling slightly short of getting a majority.
While the BJP, riding on the Modi juggernaut, is looking to break a 38-year-old poll jinx where the state has never voted the incumbent party to power, the Congress is hoping for a morale booster victory to give it a much-needed elbow room and momentum to position itself as the main opposition player in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
It also remains to be seen whether former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda-led Janata Dal (Secular) will emerge as a "kingmaker" or a "king" by holding the key to government formation, in the event of a hung verdict, as it has done in the past. The Aam Aadmi Party(AAP), which is in power in Punjab and Delhi, has also fielded candidates.
To draw people to exercise their voting rights, the EC had taken many initiatives such as theme based and ethnic polling booths, and pink booths exclusively operated by women.
Theme-based and ethnic polling booths -- 737 in all across the State -- added a lot of colour to the exercise.
The battle-ready BJP with its well-oiled election machine ran its campaign with a blitzkrieg by Prime Minister Modi.
The Congress manifesto proposing to ban the Bajrang Dal heated up the later half of the campaign as the BJP and Prime Minister Modi aggressively latched on to the issue to portray the grand old party as being against Lord Hanuman and the sentiments of Hindus.
Barbs like 'venomous snake', 'Vishakanya' and 'Nalayak beta' vitiated the poll campaign as some leaders used intemperate and abusive language.
While Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, who hails from Karnataka, likened Modi to a 'venomous snake' and his son and Congress candidate Priyank Kharge called the prime minister a "nalayak beta", BJP MLA Basanagouda Patil Yatnal described former Congress president and MP Sonia Gandhi as a 'Vishakanya' (venomous woman).
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Sheikh Hasina should be allowed to stay in India as long as she wants: Mani Shankar Aiyar
Kolkata (PTI): Former career diplomat, ex-union minister and Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar said that deposed Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina should be allowed to stay in India as long as she wants.
Expressing happiness that Indian foreign secretary Vikram Misri went to Dhaka last month and held discussions with the authorities there, Aiyar told PTI on the sidelines of the 16th Apeejay Kolkata Literary Festival that the talks should be continuous and New Delhi needs to establish ministerial contacts with the interim government of Bangladesh.
About demands by Bangladesh to extradite Hasina, he said, "I hope we will never disagree that Sheikh Hasina has done a lot of good for us. I am glad she was given refuge. I think we should be her host as long as she wants, even if it is for all her life."
Hasina, 77, has been living in India since August 5 when she fled Bangladesh following a massive student-led protest that toppled her 16-year regime.
The Congress leader said that it is true that minority Hindus in Bangladesh are being attacked, but mostly it is because they are supporters of Hasina.
“They (reports about attacks on Hindus) are true but exaggerated because many of the conflicts are more about settlement of political differences," he said on Saturday.
Earlier during a question hour session, Aiyar said that Pakistanis are much like Indians, but only the accident of partition made them a different country.
“There exists much more difference in me as a Tamil and my wife as a Punjabi, than between her and a Pakistani Punjabi,” he said.
Taking a jibe at the Narendra Modi regime, the Congress leader claimed, “We have the courage to undertake surgical strike but this government does not have the courage to sit across the table with them."
Pakistan is a country which "spreads terror but it is also a victim of terror', Aiyar said.
"They (Pakistan) thought they could bring Taliban to power in Afghanistan, (but) today their single biggest threat is the Taliban in Afghanistan," he said.
In a compliment to former prime minister Manmohan Singh, Aiyar said his single biggest achievement was to ensure that India talked to Pakistan on the back channel on what Gen Musharraf called the four-point agreement on Kashmir.
Singh also showed that it is possible to talk business with a military government, he said.
"It is suicidal for us to continue wearing Pakistan around our neck like the albatross. We should just talk to them as Manmohan Singh showed on the issue of Kashmir,” he said.
Aiyar took part in a discussion on his recent book where he touched on issues like his relation with the Gandhi family, his tryst with the Congress party, his stint in the days at Cambridge and his commentary on the present situation in the country.
