West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday said that the outcome of the Karnataka Assembly elections would have been different if the Congress had got into an alliance with the Janata Dal (Secular).
The Bharatiya Janata Party has so far won 24 seats and is leading in 81 seats while the Congress has won four seats and is leading in 71.
“Congratulations to the winners of the Karnataka elections,” Banerjee said on Twitter. “For those who lost, fight back. If Congress had gone into an alliance with the JD(S), the result would have been different. Very different.”
Ahead of the elections in Karnataka, Banerjee, the Trinamool Congress chief, had said that JD(S) leader HD Kumaraswamy would become the next chief minister of Karnataka if the state was to see a hung House. “The role of JD(S) supremo HD Deve Gowda will become crucial in such a situation,” Banerjee had said in an interview, according to the Hindustan Times. “He can win 28 to 30 seats. I think his son will become the next chief minister.”
Meanwhile, former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah invoked writer William Shakespeare to comment on the voters of Karnataka for voting for the BJP, as many other states in the recent Assembly elections have. “Et tu Karnataka,” he said on Twitter.
Historian Ramachandra Guha said if the Congress lost the elections it will be humiliating for incumbent Chief Minister Siddaramaiah. “If these trends hold, the Karnataka elections are a major humiliation for the chief minister,” he said on Twitter. “But they are also a serious setback to his party president [Rahul Gandhi]. But while the voters have thrown out Siddaramaiah, will a single Congress leader pose a sharp question to Rahul Gandhi?”
Raj Thackeray called the results a victory for the Electronic Voting Machine.
Union ministers Smriti Irani, Suresh Prabhu, Prakash Javadekar, and various chief ministers, including Mehbooba Mufti, Vasundhara Raje and Raman Singh, congratulated the BJP for the victory.
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