Karnataka Exit Polls: JDS Support to which Party?

Bengaluru, May 13: The Forecasting of Karnataka exit Polls, Former Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda's Janata Dal-Secular play a key role in forming Karnataka's next government, squashed speculation that the party could support the BJP.

But if the Congress did not get a majority, JDS spokesman Danish Ali told media, it was the Congress' "responsibility" to reach out.

An aggregate of nine exit polls shows Karnataka might have delivered a split verdict; the BJP emerging as the largest party with 97 seats but still far from the halfway mark of 112 for the 222 seats on which elections were held.

The Congress came next on this list with 90 seats. The JDS is a distant third, just as PM Narendra Modi had predicted. But its 31 seats predicted by the polls are more than enough to place it in the kingmaker's spot.

Through the election campaign, the Congress and its chief Rahul Gandhi had pointed to evidence on the ground that suggested the Janata Dal-Secular could be playing the BJP's B-team. Deve Gowda had denied the allegation, insisting that his party had been let down by both, the Congress and BJP, and would support neither.

Instead, the former PM claimed that his party had "done well" and "expect a possibility of forming the government". Once voting was over and the exit polls started pouring in, the JDS stopped talking about forming its own government.

Its leader HD Kumaraswamy, though, did seek to take a jab at the exit polls, wondering in an unusual statement, which seats had been given to the JDS that he said, had been described as "a small regional party".

"There is no question of going with BJP. If the Congress is voted out, if Congress loses the majority, if Congress goes below 100, then it is the responsibility of the Congress, and Congress also how they are going to fight 2019," Danish Ali, the JDS general secretary and chief spokesman, told media.