Events
& Issues
New Delhi, 22 April 2023
Karnataka Elections
DISSENT BADGERING BJP?
By Sagarneel Sinha
Karnataka, the only southern State where the BJP has
been able to come to power, will go to elections on May 10. While it is trying
to expand its foothold in the South in the upcoming 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the
BJP can’t afford to lose Karnataka. However, not everything is well
within the party in the state.
Its former Chief Minister Jagadish Shettar has left the
party as he was denied a ticket and joined the Congress, which has nominated
him from his old Habbali-Dharwad seat. This comes just days after former Deputy
Chief Minister Laxman Savadi too quit, and joined the Congress, for the same
reason, denial of a ticket.
The desertion of two senior party leaders like Shettar
and Savadi does indicate that the BJP may not be as confident as it appears to
be. What makes their desertion critical is that both are from the Lingayat
community, which is one of the influential communities and accounts for around
17% of the state population. Out of the 224 seats, the community influences
around 100-odd constituencies and has been the saffron party’s backbone in this
southern state.
The BJP’s tallest leader is BS Yediyurappa, who comes
from the Lingayat community. It was his magic that made the BJP the
single-largest party in the 2008 Assembly polls. Although it fell short of three
seats, the party was able to form its first government in the State with the
help of independents. However, later Yediyurappa left the BJP and formed his
own party, Karnataka Janata Paksha (KJP) and as a result, the saffron party lost
badly the 2013 Assembly polls. But Yediyurappa was back into the party fold after
Narendra Modi managed to convince him to return before the 2014 Lok Sabha
polls. In the 2018 Assembly, the BJP emerged as the single largest party, but the
Congress and Janata Dal (Secular) came together to keep it out of power. This
combination, however, didn’t last long and the BJP government backed by rebels
of JD(S) and Congress, was back with Yediyurappa being again Chief Minister in
July 2019.
Ageing Yediyurappa in his fourth stint leaned heavily
on his second son BY Vijayendra and this didn’t go well with many within the
party. Vijayendra was dubbed the “super CM”. With allegations of nepotism and
age not on his side, in July 2021, the party’s central leadership removed him from
the post and made Basavaraj Bommai, another Lingayat leader, the Chief Minister.
However, Bommai, who was once with the Janata Dal, failed to fill the space of
Yediyurappa. On the other hand, to placate Yediyurappa, last year he was
inducted into the party’s parliamentary board, the highest decision-making
body. This was also done keeping in mind the sentiments of the Lingayat
community.
With less than a month away from the polls, the BJP,
facing anti-incumbency along with a rejuvenated Congress, has fielded 82 new
faces. This means that more than one-third of its candidates are new ones and
this is done to lessen the factor of anti-incumbency — a strategy that worked
well in Gujarat.
However, in Karnataka, so far it doesn’t seem to have
clicked in the way the party had expected. This became evident when a former
chief minister and a former deputy chief minister left the party after feeling
humiliated. True that there is a need for new faces, but this doesn’t mean that
the old leaders should be forced to vacate their seats. This should be properly
communicated to the senior leaders by the leadership of the party. It seems
this wasn’t done.
With the rise of Modi along with his right-hand man Amit
Shah in the BJP, the party has gone through a change. It has been alleged that
the party command has become more centralised and is preventing the party from
having more dialogue within itself. There is a belief that the decisions of
Modi-Shah should be accepted by everyone. The BJP, which has always attacked
Congress for its centralisation of power around the Gandhi family, is ironically
now doing the same.
Who made Bommai the Chief Minister? It was the central
leadership. Then why blame only Bommai for the anti-incumbency alone? Isn’t the
central BJP leadership also responsible for the current situation in Karnataka?
This was seen in Tripura too. It was BJP’s central leadership which selected
Biplab Deb after the party came to power for the first time in 2018.
Allegations after allegations by party leaders were made against Deb for not
taking them into confidence but the party’s central leadership stood by him. It
was only when the party came to know the ground reality, it replaced Deb with
Manik Saha. In the Tripura Assembly elections held early this year, BJP was
able to win the State narrowly with a reduced vote share. The state leadership
was largely blamed. True it had made its own mistakes but importantly the
central leadership wasn’t blamed which took a long time to take timely action
against Deb.
The fact is that under the new BJP, the central
leadership largely escapes the blame, and it’s laid on the leaders at the state
level. The reality is that there has been erosion of the internal democracy
within the party. Last year, Nitin Gadkari, one of the most popular ministers
in Modi’s cabinet, and Shivraj Chauhan, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister and a
contemporary of Modi, were removed from the party’s parliamentary board. Wasn’t
that indicating that this is the era of Modi-Shah? It is also said that
the team doesn’t let strong leaders emerge at the state levels, although this
doesn’t seem to be entirely true as there are examples of Chief Minister Yogi
Adityanath in Uttar Pradesh and his counterpart in Assam Himanta Biswa Sarma,
who also looks after the entire northeast.
But there is a tendency to fight every election, including
state polls, in Modi’s name — this was done by the party recently in Tripura to
battle anti-incumbency. In Karnataka too, the party is definitely banking on the
Modi card to win the elections. Prime Minister Modi remains popular in the State
due to his government’s welfare schemes. This was evident in the last 2019
elections when the BJP swept this southern State even though there was an
alliance between Congress and JD(S).
However, the question the party needs to ask is --for
how long will it depend on Modi to win even a state election? Isn’t this a
failure of the party’s central leadership to create a new credible leadership
in Karnataka? BJP always mocks its arch-rival Congress, which also once upon a
time won elections repeatedly despite anti-incumbency in State after State. But
look at the present status of the grand old party across the country. Barring a
few States like Karnataka, it is in shambles — and one of the reasons is too
much centralisation of power. The saffron party has always proudly claimed that
it is a party with a difference but today it is following the same path of
Congress. Will changes emerge? ---INFA
(Copyright, India News & Feature Alliance)
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