Poll battle boils down to Congress vs BJP in City

63 candidates in fray for 3 Lok Sabha constituencies

The three constituencies in the City - Bangalore North, South and Central are witnessing a straight fight between the Congress and BJP.

Though a total of 63 candidates are in the fray, the electoral battle has narrowed down to that among only six contestants. While the JD(S) is not a force to reckon with, the fledgling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is threatening to vote into BJP votes.

Result: A close contest between two national parties to lord over LS constituencies in the City. The addition of 1,54,324 new voters all in the age group of 18-19 years, might provide a new dimension to the contest, with most of them likely to favour the AAP and the BJP.

It’s no cakewalk for D V Sadananda Gowda, the former chief minister and BJP candidate for Bangalore North. He is facing C Narayanaswamy of the Congress. While Gowda is trying to ensure the consolidation of caste votes, Narayanaswamy has the backing of Chief Minister Siddaramaiah. JD(S) candidate Abdul Azeem is banking on his name in the minority community.

However, AAP candidate and trade union leader Prof Babu Mathew is likely to spoil the party. He may snatch the votes of private sector workers who number more in the constituency and thus dent the BJP vote bank.

The most intense battle is in Bangalore Central where P C Mohan of the BJP and Rizwan Arshad from the Congress will fight a cracker of a contest. While Mohan is riding piggyback on ‘Modi wave,’  Rizwan is trying his best to consolidate the minority vote bank.

The intensity of the battle can be gauged from the fact that both the contestants covered not less than 25 locations each, in the past 48 hours. AAP candidate and ex-Infoscion V Balakrishnan and JD(S) candidate Nandini Alva may snatch votes of middle classes thus eating into the BJP’s traditional vote share.

Bangalore South constituency is a battle of high-profile leaders. Traditionally a saffron bastion, the Congress has experimented with as many as six different candidates in the last 30 years to take on a seasoned politician, H N Ananth Kumar of the BJP. 

This time, however, the candidature of Nandan Nilekani became the talk of the town, leaving many political pundits in a fix. Apart from reaching out to the masses by way of door-to-door campaigns, Nilekani made the most of the social media.

Initially, the local Congress MLAs were against fielding Nilekani. However, a diktat from the high command did the trick and campaigning gained feverish pitch.