A couple of months before the elections, the Congress realized that the absolute non-performance of the Dharam Singh government might prove costly to it. In a quick move, they asked S M Krishna to step down from the Maharashtra Governorship and to take over the campaign in Karnataka.
However, they stopped short of naming anyone as their chief ministerial candidate. In fact, they didn’t even give Krishna a ticket. This, I think, convinced the urban voters that Krishna was there just as a showpiece and there was little chance that he would return as CM if the congress came to power. The contrasting performances of the Krishna and Dharam Singh governments had made it clear in the voters’ minds that the captain had a large role to play in the performance of the government.
Given that a large number of CM aspirants in the Congress were considered by the voters to be incompetent, the fact that no one was projected to be CM meant that there was a high chance that a chute would become CM if the congress were in majority. This, in the end, proved to be costly for the party. Especially in urban areas.
Ok let’s see how Urban Karnataka voted in these elections.
| City | Congress | BJP | JD(S) |
| Bangalore | 10 | 17 | 1 |
| Mysore | 2 | 2 | 0 |
| Tumkur | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Shimoga | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Mangalore | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| Hubli-Dharwad | 0 | 3 | 0 |
| Belgaum | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Gulbarga | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Bellary | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Bijapur | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Davanagere | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Total | 15 | 31 | 1 |
There’s a very clear verdict here.