Karnataka: Political parties start number crunching

Party leaders in Karnataka on Friday began discussions, as the dust started settling down, after the last leg of polling for Assembly elections on Thursday.

After days of braving the rising mercury level while addressing public rallies and walking through the dusty roads, political leaders chose to engage themselves in round table discussions on their parties' performance in the 224 assembly segments.

The Bharatiya Janata Party camp appeared bouyed by the predictions of positive trends in the exit polls.

The mood in the Congress camp appeared to be a mixed one with earlier pre-poll surveys giving it an edge, while later ones reflecting a better pitch for the BJP.

Congress workers were, however, optimistic of the party romping home.

As for the Janata Dal – Secular workers, it is a case of hoping for a hung verdict to help the party to catapult to power through a coalition. The more optimistic ones were confident of the JD-S pulling through this mid-term polls.

As party leaders immersed themselves in getting a feedback from grassroot workers and constituencies in-charge about their candidates' performance, many relied on media reports and secondary feeback to guage their performance.

Tension ran high in some of the key constituencies like Shikaripura, where BJP's chief ministerial candidate B S Yeddyurappa was fighting hard to retain his seat. His rival Bangarappa of the Samajwadi Party is giving him a tough fight. Others are hoping that their strategies would work in delivering the verdict in their favour.

With the caste factor expected to work in some of the segments, it is not just political leaders but caste leaders as well who are waiting anxiously for the results. With parties counting on their traditional bastions to add to their seat tally, anxiety is running high among many candidates, as the delimitation exercise had resulted in these bastions disappearing from the electoral map.  Many have witnessed an addition of fresh voters while still others are hoping that a new terrain would not crush their hopes of victory.

While some of the parties counted on their charismatic leaders to once again unleash their magic, still others hoped that debutants would inflict a crushing blow to titans, to ring true old astrological predictions. Interestingly, a portal has also announced a reward for the astrologer with the correct predictions on the electoral prospects of the various parties and the winning candidates.