ISSUE DATE: December 28, 2020
UPDATED: December 18, 2020 23:42 IST
Charging ahead: Union home minister and BJP leader Amit Shah at the Charminar in Hyderabad during the GHMC poll campaign, Nov. 28
In the 2019 general election, Karnataka was the only state in the south where the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) notched up more than half the vote share (51.4 per cent). The five states in the region send 129 members to Parliament, so it was no surprise that a concerted campaign was launched to enlarge the saffron footprint before 2024 and the next Lok Sabha election. The party also knew that for this to happen, leveraging the state assembly election was crucial like it did in Karnataka in 2018 (it polled 36.2 per cent of the vote and fell just nine short of the majority in the 224-seat house).