Survival...The primeval instinct that kicks in when you are down; heeding that voice which tells you when and where, and how to attack, to thrust and parry, before you go in for the kill.
That must be what’s driving the Reddy camp. Ergo, if anyone in the BJP - and the RSS — believes the line that the Reddys, fighting for survival, is putting out — that the Sreeramulu assault is well and truly over now that he’s got the Bellary seat in the bag, and that there’ll be no further twisting of the knife in this bleeding wound, think again. It’s not over till it’s over, bud.
By the time this is read, counting would have started and the results will be out. State intelligence agencies and others with their ears to the ground, have already told the powers-that-be, that the Reddy mine barons’ political face is a shoo-in for the seat.
The only quibble is over the margin of victory; over whether it will be a landslide or, a whisker.
But the chips are still up in the air.
What next for Sreeramulu? And for Janardhan Reddy? Charge-sheeted for crimes in Andhra on Saturday, certain to apply for bail, possibly facing arrest on a fresh set of charges of illegal mining here in Karnataka, but liable to find his voice again, if the polls swing his way.
The havoc that Reddy could unleash as a free man would be far greater than the harm the master puppeteer has let loose when only pulling the strings from Chanchalaguda jail in Hyderabad.
But confused about whether they approach one or both Janata Party splinter groups, or the Congress, while keeping their ‘seats’ warm for the BJP?
Surely even the saffronistas must take that with a huge pinch of saffron.
Err, salt.
I find it difficult to believe that anyone, politician or mortal, would throw everything they have into a battle, and once won, would lay back and allow their tummies to be tickled, and let bygones to be bygones.
This Sreeramulu, is a man —along with his Reddy mentors — whose pride has been wounded — make that, battered — at being dismissed as nothing more than the office furniture; here’s someone, nursing a grievance against a party that ignored the plight of the light of his life, and instead, all but revelled in the unexpected bonus of ridding themselves of the embarrassment that the Reddys and their cash politics had become to the BJP.
The same man, who has let it be known that being seen as a source of shame, rather than the force that reduced the Congress presence to zilch, zippo, was unacceptable. Don’t forget what I did for you, he has said out loud.
Anyone who forgets history, will be forgotten. It’s not too hard to decipher that message. Surely.
On quitting the party, Sreeramulu and the Reddys may have presented the BJP with a fait accompli, leaving them with no choice but to gon the attack.
But the last thing they should do is allow themselves to be lulled into a false sense of security, and swallow the Reddy line that victory or defeat, Sreeramulu would do nothing to destroy the BJP from within. That he was even willing to join the mother ship at a later date!
Full marks to the canny party chief Eshwarappa for seeing it like it is, and holding a one on one with a man known to be close to the Bellary clan in a bid to dangle the carrots, pre-empt the coming together of the 30 odd legislators whose fortunes are tied to the mine barons, and oh! so susceptible to their blandishments.
The number maybe much lower. And few would want to test the political waters with a poll like Sreeramulu.
But the long-term consequences of a Sreeramulu victory in Bellary can be nothing short of cataclysmic.
Once Bellary is back in the Reddy kitty, the victory ascribed not to the party but to the individual, it will be a reaffirmation of Reddy power and dominance.
And the BJP would do well to guard its flanks.
The Reddy arc of influence is not only set to eat away at the BJP’s entrails 0and force a messy implosion, the intention is for the net to be cast ever wider.
And as Sreeramulu himself admits candidly — was the BJP not listening or have they chosen to remain deaf — he will pull in all the districts where he believes he, personally, continues to have influence.
That’s at least five districts where the Lingayat factor has swung votes in the BJP’s favour in the past, and where a B.S. Yeddyurappa, conflicted, at sixes and sevens over his own future, staring at more court time and in poor health, once held unquestioned sway. Whither Yeddyurappa is another matter of concern.
This is a state where successive leaders have had grandiloquent visions of themselves as larger than the party they serve, only for those dreams to combust when electoral reality and financial constraints hit home. First Devraj Urs, Ramakrishna Hegde, Deve Gowda and now BSY and Sreeramulu.
A third force?
The only comfort for the BJP is that they have a clean man at the helm in Sadananda Gowda. But politics is a dirty business, all about casting aspersions in the hope they will strike pay-dirt.
And with the courts almost evangelical in their newfound zeal in putting away one questionable politician after another, every party, be it the BJP which as the ruling party has the most to lose, as well as the JD(S) and the Congress, whose former chief ministers are to be investigated for crimes past, it’s now, the survival of the fittest. Or should that be, the unfittest.
