Congress decimated, but Rahul not to be blamed for Karnataka loss

Most exit polls predicted a hung assembly in Karnataka and many of them forecasted that the Congress would emerge as the single largest party.

The Congress is staring at massive defeat in Karnataka assembly elections and if the trends translate into final result then the grand old party would manage just over half the number of seats what they won in 2013 elections.

Congress president Rahul Gandhi travelled the length and breadth of Karnataka, addressed rallies, met religious leaders, visited temples and left no stone unturned to attack PM Modi. But, it turns out that all were in vain. He even publically expressed his willingness to become the next Prime Minister.

All in all, if Siddaramaiah led the Congress campaign in Karnataka, then Rahul, as the party president, also played a pivotal role. So now that the Congress has been decimated and reduced to less than 70 seats, as per latest updates, then Rahul also must take as much blame for the loss as Siddarmaiah does. But, this logic does not seem to apply, as senior Congress leader DK Shivakumar said that election was lost due to "local leadership".

"Rahul Gandhi did his best, but it is we who have lost the elections. We, the local leadership, should have en-cashed it in a proper way and because of which we lost it," Shivkumar told ANI.

Most exit polls predicted a hung assembly in Karnataka and many of them forecasted that the Congress would emerge as the single largest party. It has been four hours into the counting now, and it looks like the BJP has proved all such polls wrong. The BJP is leading in 114 seats and the Congress is lagging far behind with leads in 63 seats.

If we compare it to last time's election, then the BJP has almost tripled the number of seats it may end up winning. The opinion polls that came out weeks before polling had failed to take into account the impact of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who addressed over 20 rallies after May 1.