Local body elections were conducted on 27th December 2021 for 58 urban local bodies in Karnataka along with by-polls for 9 wards of different urban local bodies & 57-gram panchayats. The Indian National Congress (INC) or just Congress won 498 or the total 1,184 seats that were contested during the Karnataka Local Body Elections 2021. The ruling party in the state, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) secured 437 seats, Janata Dal (Secular) JD(S) secured 45 seats and others including independent candidates won 204 seats respectively.
During these local body elections held in Karnataka, Congress enjoyed a vote share of a healthy 42.06%, while BJP & JD(S) registered 36,92% & 3.8% of vote share. Other smaller parties and independent candidates accounted for a combined vote share of 17.22% according to the data released by Karnataka State Election Commission. The ruling party BJP however had something to be happy about as they won the highest number of seats which belonged to city municipal councils. BJP won 67 out of the total 166 city municipal council wards while Congress won 61, JD(S) won 12 and others scored 26.
Congress however built their numbers in town municipal councils & panchayats. Congress secured 201 out of 441 Town Municipal Council wards, whereas BJP won in 176 wards, JD(S) 21 and others in the remaining 43 wards. The numbers for the 588 wards of Pattana Panchayat elections showed that the Congress won in 236 wards, BJP in 194, JD(S) in 12 and the remaining 135 wards went to other parties & independent candidates. Karnataka Congress President D.K. Shivkumar thanked the people of Karnataka for the positive results in favour of the Congress and said the results indicated the belief of the people in Congress ideologies.
Karnataka Pradesh Congress President D.K. Shivkumar tweeted this after Congress emerged as the party with the single largest share in the 2021 Karnataka Local Body Elections – “Election results in recent times have indicated a Congress wave in the state and the urban local body election results vouch for it. Without doubt, Congress will win 2023 assembly elections and I thank our voters for their overwhelming support that has stirred our enthusiasm.”
