Karnataka Polls: CM Bommai, ex-CMs Siddaramaiah, Kumaraswamy & Jagadish Shettar, among 2,615 candidates in fray

Around 5.2 crore people are eligible to vote in the Karnataka assembly polls on Wednesday, to choose their representatives among 2,615 contesting candidates.

The ruling BJP and the Opposition Congress and JDS did their best in election campaigning by roping in a battery of national leaders including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, BJP national president JP Nadda, AICC leaders Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi, and Congress president Mallikarjuna Kharge. The campaigning also triggered show cause notices from the election commission after the authorities found comments by a few leaders being at odds with the model code of conduct.

Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai, Opposition leader Siddaramaiah, former CMs HD Kumaraswamy and Jagadish Shettar, and Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) president DK Shivakumar are among the 2615 candidates in the fray. The parties have come up with a litany of promises to voters to improve on their tally over the 2018 outcome.



The Election Commission (EC) has created a total of 58,545 polling stations across 224 constituencies in the state. A few of these have been categorised as ‘critical polling stations,’ and will be monitored more closely.

As of Tuesday, about 12,000 stations have been designated critical, additional Chief Electoral Officer Venkatesh Kumar R told ET. “These are stations which have either witnessed 90% voting in the last election, have seen poll-day or post poll violence, or stations where a single candidate got 75% of the votes,” he said.

Critical Polling Stations will be covered by one or more of the measures like Micro Observers, Webcasting, CCTV, etc, according to data from the election office.

To ensure security, in addition to forces from Karnataka, 2,716 police officers and 5,784 Home guards have been deployed from neighbouring states.

Vote from Home: This year, election authorities introduced a ‘vote-from-home’ option for citizens above the age of 80 and specially-abled voters. The window for such voting was open between April 29 and May 6.

About 94% senior citizens and 97% of the specially abled people who registered for this exercise voted using this facility.

For senior citizens who have not yet voted, the Commission has provided the option of booking a pick up and drop facility using the Chunavana App.

Seizures: This year’s election has been the costliest one in terms of illicit seizures, with poll authorities seizing nearly Rs 375 crore in cash, liquor, drugs and precious metals, marking a 4.5 times increase from 2018 elections, according to election commission data. Additionally, about Rs 83 crore were seized in two weeks before the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) was announced on March 27.