Voter turnout picks up momentum in Karnataka Assembly polls, crosses 50 per cent mark
Bengaluru (PTI): Voter turnout picked up momentum and crossed the 50 per cent mark by 3 pm on Wednesday, in polling to elect representatives to the 224-member Karnataka Legislative Assembly.
The total voter turnout across the state stood at 52.18 per cent, with three more hours left for polling to end at 6 pm.
In the eight hours of voting, which began at 7 am, Ramanagara recorded the highest turnout of 63.36 per cent, while the the lowest polling was seen in Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) South limits (parts of Bengaluru city) at 40.28 per cent, election officials said.
The State is mainly witnessing a three-cornered contest between the ruling BJP, the Congress and former prime minister H D Deve Gowda's Janata Dal (Secular).
A total of 5.31 crore electors are eligible to cast their vote in 58,545 polling stations across the state, where 2,615 candidates are in the fray.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier on Wednesday urged the people of Karnataka to vote in large numbers and enrich the "festival of democracy".
Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi too appealed to the people of Karnataka to vote in large numbers to build a progressive and a "40-per-cent-commission-free" state.
Villagers of Masabinal in Vijayapura district stopped a poll duty vehicle carrying electronic voting machines (EVMs), manhandled an officer and damaged control and ballot units on Wednesday following which 23 persons were arrested, the Election Commission said.
The villagers stopped a sector officer's vehicle which was carrying reserved EVMs and damaged two control and ballot units each and three VVPATs (Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail) machines, the EC said in a statement.
"Sector officer was manhandled, 23 people arrested", the EC said, adding that top district officials rushed to the village, which comes under Basavana Bagewadi Assembly segment.
Police sources said the villagers' "action" came after "rumours" that officials were "changing" the EVMs and VVPATs.
Meanwhile, in Padmanabhanagar constituency here, some youth armed with sticks attacked their political rivals in a polling booth at Papaiah Garden. They went on a rampage in which a few women standing in queue to vote sustained injuries, the sources said.
In another incident at Sanjeevarayanakote in Ballari district, some Congress and BJP workers came to blows.
Karnataka recorded a voter turnout of 72.36 per cent in the 2018 Assembly polls.
The BJP had then emerged as the single largest party by winning 104 seats, followed by Congress with 80 seats and JD(S) 37. There was also one independent member, while the BSP and Karnataka Pragnyavantha Janatha Party (KPJP) got one legislator each elected.
With no party getting a clear majority at the time and as Congress and JD(S) were trying to forge an alliance, B S Yediyurappa of the BJP, which was the single largest party, staked a claim and formed the government. However, the government was dissolved within three days, ahead of a trust vote, as Yediyurappa was unable to muster the numbers.
Subsequently, the Congress-JD(S) alliance formed the government with H D Kumaraswamy as Chief Minister, but the wobbly dispensation collapsed in 14 months, as 17 legislators resigned and came out of the ruling coalition. They defected to the BJP and facilitated the party's return to power. In the bypolls held subsequently in 2019, the ruling party won 12 out of 15 seats.
In the outgoing Assembly, the ruling BJP has 116 MLAs, followed by the Congress 69, JD(S) 29, BSP one, independents two, speaker one and vacant six (following deaths and resignations to join other parties ahead of the polls).
While the ruling BJP, riding on the Modi juggernaut, wants to break the 38-year jinx -- the state has never voted back the incumbent party to power since 1985 -- and retain its southern citadel, the Congress is seeking to wrest power to give the party much-needed elbow room and momentum to position itself as the main opposition player in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
Also what needs to be watched out for is whether the JD(S) would emerge as "kingmaker" or "king", by holding the key to government formation in the event of a hung verdict, as it has done in the past.
In a bid to check apathy among voters, the Election Commission decided to hold polling in the middle of the week to prevent people planning an outing by clubbing the poll-day holiday with the weekend break.
The votes will be counted on May 13.
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Los Angeles county wildfires could be costliest in US history, early estimates say
Los Angeles, Jan 11: The wildfires that erupted this week across Los Angeles County are still raging, but already are projected to be among the costliest natural disasters in US history.
The devastating blazes have killed at least 11 people and incinerated more than 12,000 structures since Tuesday, laying waste to entire neighbourhoods once home to multimillion-dollar properties.
While it's still too early for an accurate tally of the financial toll, the losses so far likely make the wildfires the costliest ever in the US, according to various estimates.
A preliminary estimate by AccuWeather put the damage and economic losses so far between USD 135 billion and USD 150 billion. By comparison, AccuWeather estimated the damage and economic losses caused by Hurricane Helene, which tore across six southeastern states last fall, at USD 225 billion to USD 250 billion.
“This will be the costliest wildfire in California modern history and also very likely the costliest wildfire in US modern history, because of the fires occurring in the densely populated areas around Los Angeles with some of the highest-valued real estate in the country,” said Jonathan Porter, the private firm's chief meteorologist.
AccuWeather factors in a multitude of variables in its estimates, including damage to homes, businesses, infrastructure and vehicles, as well as immediate and long-term health care costs, lost wages and supply chain interruptions.
The insurance broker Aon PLC also said Friday that the LA County wildfires will likely end up being the costliest in US history, although it did not issue an estimate. Aon ranks a wildfire known as the Camp Fire in Paradise, California, in 2018 as the costliest in US history up to now at USD 12.5 billion, adjusted for inflation. The Camp Fire killed 85 people and destroyed about 11,000 homes.
The LA County wildfires, which were fuelled by hurricane-force Santa Ana winds and an extreme drought, remained largely uncontained Saturday. That means the final tally of losses from the blazes is likely to increase, perhaps substantially.
“To put this into perspective, the total damage and economic loss from this wildfire disaster could reach nearly 4 per cent of the annual GDP of the state of California,” AccuWeather's Porter said.
In a report Friday, Moody's also concluded that the wildfires would prove to be the costliest in US history, specifically because they have ripped through densely populated areas with higher-end properties.
While the state is no stranger to major wildfires, they have generally been concentrated in inland areas that are not densely populated. That's led to less destruction per acre, and in damage to less expensive homes, Moody's noted.
That's far from the case this time, with one of the largest conflagrations destroying thousands of properties across the Pacific Palisades and Malibu, home to many Hollywood stars and executives with multimillion-dollar properties. Already, numerous celebrities have lost homes to the fires.
“The scale and intensity of the blazes, combined with their geographic footprint, suggest a staggering price tag, both in terms of the human cost and the economic toll,” Moody's analysts wrote. The report did not include a preliminary cost estimate of the wildfire damage.
It could be several months before a concrete tally of the financial losses from the wildfires will be possible.
“We're in the very early stages of this disaster,” Porter said.
