BANGALORE: It’s like rubbing salt on the wounds of the Bharatiya Janata Party, which had suffered a humiliating defeat in the May 5 assembly elections. The party is now unlikely to even be the main opposition in the new Assembly.
Both the opposition parties, the JD(S) and BJP, have 40 seats each in their kitty at the end of counting of votes on Sunday and have locked horns to stake claim as the principal opposition party.
According to official sources, if two parties secure equal number of seats, the Speaker of the Assembly will confer the status of main opposition party in the House to the one which had polled the highest number of votes in the election.It is evident now that the BJP, which was in power for the last five years and was humbled badly in this election, had polled 62,32,595 votes against the total of 62,69,575 votes secured by JD(S), which is less than about 36,970 votes.
According to data released by the Election Commission of India, Congress which was swept back to power, has managed to secure 36.55 per cent votes, improving on its 2008 tally by 1.79 per cent.The JD(S), which is all set to secure the status of the main opposition in the Assembly, secured 20.08 per cent of votes polled, against 19.97 per cent of votes polled in 2008, registering a rise of 1.12 per cent.
The BJP, which formed the first-ever government in South India, had secured 33.86 per cent of votes in 2008 elections, but managed to get only 19.97 per cent of total votes polled this time, a whopping 13.89 per cent dip.
