'Congress won because of freebies'

'Free this and free that, and the voters were with them.'

A Manjunath has been in the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Congress and is now with the Janata Dal-Secular. So he knows the nook and cranny of every party and how they function.

He won the 1999 assembly election as a BJP candidate, as a Congress candidate in 2008 and 2013. He was a minister under then chief minister Siddaramaiah in 2013.

He lost the 2023 election in spite of polling 82,811 votes as a Janata Dal-Secular candidate from Magadi constituency, which the Congress won as it swept the state.

"The Muslim vote was earlier with the JD-S. Now they have shifted to the Congress," Manjunath tells Rediff.com's A Ganesh Nadar.

Sir, you have been in the BJP, Congress and JD-S, you know all the parties and also the people of Karnataka very well. Tell us why the BJP lost so badly.

There are three reasons that the BJP lost. First was the ticket distribution. They did not give tickets to the right candidates.

Second was anti-incumbency. The third and very important reason was (B S) Yediyurappa.

If Yediyurappa was there, the Lingayats would have voted for the BJP.

Without him, that vote bank was transferred to the Congress.

Another reason is that the BJP doesn't have any strong local leader.

Why did Narendra D Modi and Amit A Shah's roadshows have no effect?

The only place the roadshows had any effect was Old Mysuru. The JD-S lost there because of these roadshows.

In spite of losing the state the BJP did win in coastal Karnataka and Bengaluru. Why?

In coastal Karnataka and Bengaluru, the Muslims voted en masse for the Congress.

In reverse polariation, the Hindus voted for the BJP. A section of the Hindu vote went to the Congress also.

The JD-S has a former prime minister in H D Deve Gowda and a two-time chief minister in his son H D Kumaraswamy and yet in every elections its number of MLAs is going down. Why?

The Muslim vote was earlier with the JD-S. Now they have shifted to the Congress.

The Congress won the elections because of their promise of freebies.

Free this and free that, and the voters were with them.

Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff.com