Congress has not won Lok Sabha seat in Bengaluru after 1999, but hopeful of turning the tide in 2024

Bengaluru South was one of the first Lok Sabha seats to be won by the BJP in Karnataka in 1991 along with Mangalore (now Dakshina Kannada), Bidar and Tumakuru seats. Of them, the party has retained Bengaluru South and Dakshina Kannada seats since then.

Congress has not won a Lok Sabha seat in Bengaluru city after 1999. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has won all the Lok Sabha seats in the city since 2004 — two seats in 2004, and three since 2009 after delimitation of seats in 2008.

This has been the case even when Congress outdid the BJP in Assembly polls thrice — 2004, 2013 and 2018 — indicating a schism in voter’s preferences in Bengaluru for the State and Centre.

A senior Congress leader from the city who has unsuccessfully contested Lok Sabha polls twice said the city has preferred BJP for Lok Sabha even when Congress found favour in the Assembly elections. “The best example was the 2004 polls. Both Assembly and parliamentary polls were held on the same day, in the same booth. While Congress won seven out of eight Assembly seats in Bengaluru South Lok Sabha constituency, BJP won the Lok Sabha seat. This essentially means the same voter voted for a Congress MLA and a BJP MP, not even a minute apart,” he said. 

In fact, Bengaluru South was one of the first Lok Sabha seats to be won by the BJP in Karnataka in 1991 along with Mangalore (now Dakshina Kannada), Bidar and Tumakuru seats. Of them, the party has retained Bengaluru South and Dakshina Kannada seats since then.

“In 2009, when the United Progressive Alliance did very well in all urban centres across India, BJP won all three seats in Bengaluru. Even when we fielded an icon (Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani) in 2014, BJP won that seat. BJP has always fielded outsiders in Bengaluru North seat, and yet won it consistently since 2004,” the Congress leader said.

A senior Congress minister from the city said that voters in Bengaluru had generally tilted right since the 1990s. The Congress had been able to break this only in Assembly polls due to a strong slate of candidates and anti-incumbency. “It is a fact that we do not have a strong slate of candidates for the Lok Sabha seats in Bengaluru. We have never had stable faces for each of these constituencies. We have changed candidates in almost every election,” he said. 

Bengaluru’s senior BJP leader and Leader of Opposition in the Karnataka Legislative Assembly R. Ashok claimed that the issue of national security, relatively less corruption during NDA government tenures in Delhi, and the development plank of the party has historically struck a chord with the city’s voters. “Modi factor has also boosted BJP and held us steady in the city since 2014,” he said.