Voting begins for high-stakes Karnataka Assembly elections
Bengaluru: Voting for the high stakes Assembly elections in Karnataka began early on Wednesday, in a state where the ruling BJP is eyeing to script history by retaining its southern citadel while a combative Congress eyes a comeback ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
Polling is being held for 224 seats in what is being seen mainly as a three-cornered contest between the ruling BJP, the Congress and former prime minister H D Deve Gowda's Janata Dal (Secular)
The electoral fate of top guns--Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai, Congress veterans Siddaramaiah and DK Shivakumar and JD(S) leader HD Kumaraswamy among others will be sealed during the day-long exercise. Counting of polled votes will be taken up on May 13.
The voting that began at 7 am amid tight security will go on till 6 in the evening.
A total of 5,31,33,054 electors are eligible to cast their vote in 58,545 polling stations across the state, where 2,615 candidates are in the fray.
Among the electors, 2,67,28,053 are male, 2,64,00,074 female and 4,927 "others", while among the candidates 2,430 are male, 184 female and one from third gender.
While the ruling BJP, riding on the Modi juggernaut, wants to break the 38-year jinx -- the State has never voted the incumbent party to power since 1985 -- and tighten the grip on its southern stronghold, the Congress is seeking to wrest power to give the party the much-needed elbow room and momentum to position itself as the main opposition player in the 2024 parliamentary polls.
Also what needs to be seen is, whether the JD (S) will emerge as a "kingmaker" or a "king" by holding the key for government formation, in the event of a hung verdict, as it has done in the past.
A total of 75,603 Ballot Units (BU), 70,300 Control Units (CU) and 76,202 voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) are slated to be used during the voting.
According to poll officials, elaborate security arrangements have been made across the state for the smooth conduct of elections and forces have been deployed from neighbouring states as well.
As many as 84,119 State Police Officers and 58,500 CAPF (Central Armed Police Forces ) police in 650 CoYs (companies) are on law & order and security duty on poll day across the state.
'Critical Polling Stations' are covered by one or more of the measures like Micro Observers, Webcasting and CCTVs to keep a watch on the polling process as force multipliers.
The voter turnout in the 2018 polls was 72.36 per cent.
In a bid to check apathy among voters, the Election Commission has come up with the idea of holding the poll in the middle of the week to prevent people planning an outing by clubbing the poll-day holiday with the weekend break.
CM Bommai (Shiggaon), Leader of Opposition and former CM Siddaramaiah (Varuna), JD(S) leader Kumaraswamy (Channapatna), Shivakumar (Kanakapura) are the among the top candidates in the fray.
Besides Siddaramaiah and Kumaraswamy, Jagadish Shettar (Hubli-Dharwad Central) is the other former Chief Minister who is contesting this election. Shettar had recently joined the Congress, quitting BJP.
"A government with full majority" seemed to be the war cry of the leaders of all the political parties during campaigning that ended on Monday, as they stressed on getting a clear mandate to form a strong and stable government, unlike what happened after the 2018 polls.
In the 2018 Assembly elections, BJP emerged as the single largest party by winning 104 seats, followed by Congress at 80, JD(S) 37. There was one independent member, while BSP and Karnataka Pragnyavantha Janata Party (KPJP) had one legislator each.
With no party having a clear majority and as the Congress and JD(S) were trying to forge an alliance, B S Yediyurappa of BJP staked claim and formed the government. However, it had to resign within three days ahead of the trust vote, unable to muster the required numbers.
Subsequently, the Congress-JD(S) alliance formed the government with Kumaraswamy as CM, but the wobbly dispensation collapsed in 14 months, as 17 legislators resigned and came out of the ruling coalition, and defected to BJP facilitating the party coming back to power. In the bypolls held subsequently in 2019, the ruling party won 12 out of 15 seats.
In the outgoing Assembly, BJP has 116 MLAs, followed by the Congress at 69, JD(S)--29, BSP one, two Independents, Speaker one and vacant six (following deaths and resignation to join other parties ahead of polls).
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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.
