The axe factor: Siddaramaiah ends Lingayat coup

“I’m not interested in preserving the status quo; I want to overthrow it.”—Niccolo Machiavelli

In the case of our Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and all the poisoned barbs flying his way, he must feel like a great big giant dartboard! Except, the darts ain’t hitting the target. And his rivals have greatly underestimated the grit of this ultimate survivor who clearly has his own dedicated team fighting his battles.

It takes a rare kind of courage to exit one comfort zone and not just inhabit a new one, but thrive in it. In Siddaramaiah’s case, as is now evident to every one of his detractors, he went, in the blink of an eye, from the JD(S) Deve Gowda’s hand-picked protégé to 10 Janpath’s man in Karnataka, transitioning from trusted member of the inner circle in one party to an even more trusted one in the new.

He lands on his feet, and proves the adage that fortune favours the bold. The BBMP polls, into which Siddu threw everything he had, every sweetener, from billboards and secret pacts and backroom deals, and still came up short, should, his enemies thought, prove his undoing. It didn’t. He set aside his own doubts about doing a deal with the JD(S), and turned a potential debacle into an opportunity, by displaying his ability to push the right buttons in a rival party.

And frankly, that’s why he was brought into the Congress wasn’t it? To live up to his promise that he would slowly cannibalise the Dal from within. Let’s face it, the trio that did all the running are only notionally from the Dal. Their bonds to Siddaramaiah date back over several years. They transcend party affiliations. As one Congressman carped “Zameer Ahmed maybe from the JD(S), but he will always be Siddaramaiah’s man.” True or not – Zameer and the two others may have just been smart enough to see the main chance and capitalise on their friendship with the CM. Dal supremo Deve Gowda knew too that if he didn’t give in to the trio, he would lose them to the Congress.

His elder son Revanna’s friendship with Siddu may have played a part in Mr Deve Gowda’s change of heart and no surprises therefore that the other son and heir to the party, H.D. Kumaraswamy has made the usual noises about how he now disagrees with his father. Whether that’s because HDK fears that a Congress ‘B’ team is now calling the shots from within his party – that’s the buzz - the opposite could as easily be true. Siddu’s diehard critics within the party say that Siddu and his coterie are the Dal ‘B’ team within the Congress!

Either way, a group of Old Congressmen were hoping that time and events would overwhelm and reduce Siddu to nothing. But with 10 Janpath not willing to dislodge a success story, they’ve watched as neither, the wave of farmers suicide across the state, nor the BBMP debacle, has taken Siddu down. Indeed, the man who some say, shepherded his entry into the Congress, and who is now is one of his biggest critics hasn’t been able to change 10 Janpath’s mind on the small matter of bringing in one of Siddu’s closet critics – and his own man – as a deputy.

This is why the political world is now riveted as Siddu floats another kite by talking incessantly about a long overdue Cabinet rejig. Whether it will be a reshuffle or an expansion isn’t clear as yet, but the buzz in Congress circles is that it’s the chief minister’s signal to all his critics that his patience is at end, and the men who are ranged against him will be shown the door.

They range from the venerable but outspoken Speaker Kagodu Thimmappa who could be back in the cabinet to Congress stalwarts like Mallikarjun Kharge and Shamanoor Shivashankarappa. The last two are of some vintage. In Kharge’s case, he can see the last mile looming. The years are slipping by. And the opportunity to be chief minister of his home state seemingly more and more elusive as Chief Minister Siddaramaiah races ahead, both hands firmly on what, in Mr Kharge’s eyes should have been his prize.

In the hope that the BBMP debacle would result in Siddu’s dethroning, he had put plans in motion to buttress his own Backward credentials with a powerful Lingayat like Shamanoor, sources said. The Lingayats who en masse back the BJP, he told the bigwigs would shift to the Congress! But Siddaramaiah kept the BBMP under his grasp, and with Mr Kharge having no more than a handful of supporters, if that, it would be difficult for him to win the chief ministership based on numbers. All Shamanoor ever wanted is for his son Mallikarjun to become a minister, which may now be difficult as Siddaramaiah rewards his friends and punishes his foes. Nobody knows how this will play out as yet. Not until Thursday when the CM says he is going to Delhi for consultations.

But the plan to spring a Dalit-Backward-Lingayat combine has obviously unraveled. Siddaramaiah may not know who or where the next challenge will come from. But while he’s risen above this one, I’ll leave you with another unseating that did actually play out to its architect’s fullest satisfaction, with Deve Gowda paying the price for trusting a Congresswoman who shall remain unnamed. Neighbours in Delhi in 2007, the lady told the Dal’s canny tactician that if he brought the B.S. Yeddyurappa government down by not voting for it, he would have the satisfaction of seeing his son back as chief minister of Karnataka with the support of the Congress. He followed her instructions to the letter and the BSY government fell. Except, when he returned to Delhi to seal the deal, he found her house locked, empty, she was unreachable on her cellphone. As Plato said “Cunning... is but the low mimic of wisdom….”