With Karnataka set for close finish, BJP relies on Modi factor amid hiccups as Cong pins hope on guarantees

North Karnataka’s districts encompassing 14 Lok Sabha seats – where the BJP made a clean sweep in the 2019 polls riding the Narendra Modi wave – are going to polls Tuesday in the second and final phase of voting in the state (third phase in India), with local factors appearing to be more at play than national ones.

Unlike the largely low-key electioneering ahead of the first phase of polls on April 26, the campaign in the second phase has been a high-decibel affair on account of an alleged sex abuse scandal involving Prajwal Revanna of the Janata Dal (Secular), a BJP ally, which flared up in the meantime. The grandson of JD(S) supremo and ex-Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda, Prajwal is party MP and candidate from the Hassan seat that went to polls on April 26.

The sex scandal allegedly involving Prajwal, who left for Germany early on April 27, provided ammunition to the Congress, which rules the state, to counter the BJP national leadership’s attacks on issues like “minority appeasement” and the murder of a Lingayat college girl Neha Hiremath in Hubballi allegedly by her estranged Muslim friend.

Top Congress leader Rahul Gandhi called Prajwal a “mass rapist” during a rally in Raichur on May 2, accusing the BJP leadership of being allegedly aware of the JD(S) MP’s alleged sex crimes when he was given a poll ticket by its NDA ally.

The sex scandal itself is however believed to have no bearing, on the ground, on the poll outcome in the three regions bound for Tuesday voting – the Lingayat-dominated Bombay Karnataka (five seats), the impoverished Hyderabad-Karnataka region (five seats), the agricultural central districts (three seats), and one coastal district, Uttara Kannada, which is known for being a Hindutva bastion.

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