Nine Muslim candidates, all from the Congress, emerged victorious in the Karnataka Assembly polls for which results were declared on Saturday.
The Congress won 135 seats out of the total 224, the BJP won 66 and the JDS 19 and others 2.
These were the first Assembly elections in the state since the controversy over hijab and the central government imposed a five-year ban on the Islamist organisation Popular Front of India (PFI). The BJP had scrapped a 4 per cent quota for backward Muslims, which the Congress has promised to restore.
A consolidation of Muslim votes, which make up nearly 13 per cent of the state’s electorate, seems to have worked in favour of the Congress that has won the election with a thumping majority.
The Congress gave tickets to 15 Muslim candidates and nine of them won. The JDS fielded 23 Muslim candidates, but all lost.
Asaduddin Owaisi’s AIMIM contested two seats and secured only 0.02 per cent of the votes polled. The SDPI — the political outfit of the PFI — met a similar fate as none of its 16 candidates could open their accounts.
Reserved seats
The BJP failed to win even a single seat reserved for the Scheduled Tribe (ST) category in Karnataka.
The party also lost in 24 constituencies out of 36 reserved for the Scheduled Caste (SC) candidates.
Karnataka has 51 reserved constituencies, out of which 36 seats are reserved for SC candidates and 15 for candidates belonging to the ST community.
The BJP's poor show in the reserved seats came despite the outgoing chief minister Basavaraj Bommai's decision to increase reservation for the SC/ST community in the state.
Out of 36 SC seats, Congress candidates won 21, while the BJP candidates emerged victorious in 12 seats. The JDS, which showed poor performance, managed to win just three seats.