The Aam Aadmi Party's foray into South India failed spectacularly on Saturday as it garnered a measly 0.58 per cent of the vote share in the Karnataka Legislative Assembly elections and all its candidates lost their deposits.
For a party known for its urban, middle-class roots, the AAP's best performance came in Ron, a remote, rural assembly constituency in the Gadag district where its candidate, Anekal Doddaiah, polled 8,839, or 4.96 per cent of the 1,78,196 votes. The party was trounced in urban centres, especially Bengaluru, where three of its prominent candidates — Brijesh Kalappa, Mohan Dasari and Mathai K — lost badly.
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The party fielded candidates in 208 of the state's 224 assembly constituencies as it attempted to make Karnataka its gateway to South India. It promised corruption-free, welfarist governance and relied on the educated middle class to back it at election hustings. But weak grassroots support and the lack of a clear narrative kept the masses away from it. The party polled just 2.25 lakh votes. For context, the party claims 2 lakh members across Karnataka.
Only 72 of the 208 AAP candidates polled 1,000 votes or more. Kalappa, a former Congress spokesperson who quit the party and joined the AAP, polled just 600 votes in Chickpet. AAP's vote share was lower than NOTA's (0.58 per cent vs 0.69 per cent).
In the 2018 elections, the AAP fielded 29 candidates and polled 20,000 votes.
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In Bengaluru's 28 assembly constituencies, the AAP polled 1,000 or more votes in only 16. In Mahadevapura, which witnessed massive floods last year and where the AAP ran an aggressive campaign focused on civic issues, the party got just 4,551 of the 3,34,616 votes. It got 2,585 votes in Bangalore South, 1,055 in BTM Layout, 2,967 in CV Raman Nagar, 1,989 in Bommanahalli, 1,271 in Byatarayanapura, 4,46 in Dasarahalli, 1,026 in Hebbal, 2,319 in KR Puram, 1,600 in Mahalakshmi Layout, 2,092 in Padmanabhanagar, 1,191 in RR Nagar, 1,488 in Sarvagnanagar, 1,604 in Shanthinagar, 1,634 in Shivajinagar and 2,199 in Yeshwantpur.
The AAP did relatively better in 19 assembly constituencies in North Karnataka, polling over 3,000 votes in three seats.
The party's Karnataka unit president, Prithvi Reddy, said people wanted to get rid of the BJP so they chose a party that was most likely to win.
He said the AAP expected to get a 6 per cent vote share and win a seat. According to him, the AAP thought it had a chance in Ron, Bidar South, Dasarahalli and CV Raman Nagar.
Reddy defended the decision to contest almost all seats and called it "our moral responsibility".
He said the party's performance in North Karnataka was noteworthy and added that the region was "fertile to change". The AAP wants to focus on BBMP, zilla panchayat and taluk panchayat polls, he said.
Mathai, a former KAS officer, said two things worked against him in Shanthinagar: rival candidates bribed voters and Muslims and Christians voted en masse to defeat the BJP. He expected at least 15,000 votes but polled just 1,604.
Mathai said things would have been different had Delhi Chief Minister and AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal campaigned in Karnataka.