As Siddaramaiah stakes prestige in Chamarajanagar fight, Congress guarantees his calling card

A constituency reserved for Scheduled Castes, most of it forested, including hundreds of remote tribal hamlets where the only mark of “development” is tap water supply that reached recently, and located in the third least populated district of Karnataka, has become one of the keenest fights in the state in this Lok Sabha election.

Chief Minister Siddaramaiah’s native place, Chamarajanagar has become a contest between his government’s guarantees and those promised by the Narendra Modi government.

Karnataka was the first big state to go the Congress way after a long time, with last year’s win coming on the back of its promise of guarantees, rolled out over the course of the campaign. However, now the BJP campaign’s central theme, seeking to overshadow the Congress promises, is “Modi ki guarantee”.

While Modi is a factor in the urban regions of Chamarajanagar, the fact that the Siddaramaiah government has made at least some progress on its promises is helping it in rural areas.

Like with Devamma, a tribal who lives in the Karemala hamlet inside the Bandipur Tiger Reserve, among the lakh or so like her living in these parts (out of the constituency’s 17.78 lakh voters). She says her husband, who works as a forest watcher in the reserve, spends most of his earnings on alcohol. The Rs 2,000 she gets under the Congress government’s Gruha Lakshmi Scheme (guaranteeing the direct monthly cash transfer of that amount to women who are heads of BPL households in the state) helps her and her two children make ends meet. The ration from the state government’s Anna Bhagya Scheme is a bonus.

Chamarajanagar is one of the constituencies in Karnataka where women voters at 8.99 lakh outnumber men (around 8.7 lakh). In February, 2.59 lakh women in