The 5th May elections to Karnataka assembly has led to Congress winning clear majority with 121 seats and BJP sharing second position with JD(S). Though the BJP dissidents, KJP and BSR, got very few seats their votes led to BJP’ debacle. The results show that Congress which has a record of long years of anti-people rule could return to power due to negative votes against the BJP and division of votes in to five contenders who had fielded candidates in all seats and poured hundreds of crores of rupees in the campaign besides utilizing the caste and communal vote banks more brazenly. In the course of this campaign assisted by the so-called strictness of the Election Commission, which prevented the use of posters, wall writing, street corner meetings etc while it failing to prevent the use of money, liquor power and caste-communal feelings by the ruling class parties, the smaller parties were marginalized. The transformation of media through advertisements, paid news etc led to monopolization of propaganda by these parties using its wide-spread reach . In this situation, even the share of votes to CPI, CPI(M) like parties, who used to get few seats in the past, also shrunk sharply.
When the so-called main stream parties spent crores of rupees in each seat, CPI(ML) could collect and spent only Rs. 50, 000 on an average in the 18 seats it contested. So in spite of a strenuous campaign with all party cadres working hard and in spite of a very good record of numerous struggles including land struggles the Party could get only a little more than 20,000 votes. The election results have once again proved our assertion that only by further intensifying class struggle in all fields and developing the organization at grass root level a revolutionary party can make impressive intervention in the elections as part of its overall revolutionary offensive.
K.N.Ramachandran,
General Secretary, CPI(ML)
New Delhi, 8th May 2013
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