Sonia

New Delhi, May 24: Wide of the mark in Gujarat, the Congress isn’t keeping Sonia Gandhi under any “illusions” about Karnataka.

“We are not optimistic but we aren’t pessimistic either,” was how a central office-bearer of the party, closely involved in the elections down south, summed up the mood at 24 Akbar Road on the eve of the Bangalore verdict.

In contrast to the exaggerated claims on Gujarat — that ranged from simple majority to a “sweep” — Congress managers this time underplayed their projections for Karnataka.

One of them who briefed party chief Sonia yesterday told her it was a “close” race that could see the BJP come “comfortably close” to the halfway mark (113 in a 224-strong Assembly) or the Congress could emerge the single-largest party.

Sources said Sonia was not fed on “illusions” of a “landslide win” but was told that if there was an undercurrent in support of the BJP, as sections claimed, the party should sail towards a simple majority.

The sources didn’t sound overly worried that the BJP could wrest power. “One has to absorb such convulsions and evolve strategies to deal with them,” said a source.

The Congress’s assessment is the Janata Dal (Secular) — led by H.D. Deve Gowda and his son H.D. Kumaraswamy — wouldn’t do “as badly” as it had thought. “They should get more than 30 seats and that would be a creditable showing,” said a source.

Asked why the Congress was sounding a bit like a loser, the sources said there were “many reasons”.

First, party leaders had been lulled into believing that the Election Commission would go for polls in October instead of May because the electoral map had to be redrawn to incorporate recommendations of the Delimitation Commission.

The poll panel, the sources said, sprang a surprise by announcing polls in May in accordance with the new map.

Second, talk about “extracting mileage” from the increase in the number of seats for SCs and STs — its “natural” constituents — faltered once realpolitik came into play.

The party’s “pro-poor” image took a beating as inflation soared and former chief minister S.M. Krishna, who returned to state politics, became identified with “economic reformists”.

In rural areas, where the elections were fought along stark caste lines, the Dal (S) managed to straddle the rural rich-poor divide thanks to the perception that former chief minister Kumaraswamy was a “harbinger of economic prosperity with a humane face”.

“Something that Manmohan Singh keeps saying,” rued a Congress source. “But we failed to communicate the message.”

The effort to project state unit chief Mallikarjuna Kharge as candidate for chief minister because he is a Dalit came unstuck for several reasons.

He was seen more as an organisational man than a charismatic leader and his attempts at networking with Dalit bureaucrats and thinkers started a tad too late.

Also, Muslim and Dalit votes got divided between the party and the Dal (S).

The sources said in the second and third phases of the election, the Jaipur blasts helped the BJP in communally polarised areas.

They conceded that the strategy to consolidate anti-Lingayat votes after the BJP’s overdrive to project B.S. Yeddyurappa (a Lingayat) as candidate for chief minister didn’t take off because of infighting at the top. “The trouble is we have more leaders than workers,” a source conceded.

The sources wondered what Delhi-based Karnataka “heavyweights” — like Margaret Alva, M. Veerappa Moily, Oscar Fernandes, B.K. Hari Prasad, Janardhan Poojary, K.H. Muniappa and C.K. Jaffer Sharief — were doing apart from “cutting each other’s nominees out in the candidates’ lists”.