Will Ashok Pujari’s BJP entry end Jarkiholi’s run in Gokak?
Belagavi/Shivamogga: Almost for a decade-and-a-half, the Jarkiholi family has ruled unchallenged in Gokak without giving anybody a chance to win in any election in Gokak assembly segment. After several futile attempts to topple the Jarkiholis, the BJP finally sees a ray of hope and has roped in Ashok Pujari, a powerful JD(S) leader from Gokak, who narrowly missed victories in the past. Pujari's rising popularity in Gokak and his entry into BJP a few days ago may have given a clear indication to Jarkiholis that their dominance in Gokak is under threat. Even before he joined BJP at a grand event in Belagavi on Monday, the state BJP leadership had announced him as the party's candidate for the next assembly elections in Gokak. Stating that Gokak politics is set for a change, state BJP president, Pralhad Joshi said Belagavi without naming the Jarkiholis that people in Gokak had developed a mouse into a tiger. For more than a year, BJP MPs Prabhakar Kore and Suresh Angadi and MLA Laxman Savadi have been exerting pressure on Pujari to join BJP.
In the past four assembly polls in Gokak, the eldest of the Jarkiholis, Ramesh of the Congress emerged the winner comfortably. He managed to ensure his brother Bheemshi was the BJP candidate and won the election without much opposition! Pujari came into the limelight in the last assembly election when he narrowly lost to Ramesh Jarkiholi. It was then that BJP state leadership started persuading Pujari to join BJP. “The roots of the Jarkiholis in Gokak are so strong that it is difficult for anybody to defeat them. Besides winning Gokak, the Jarkiholi brothers are winning from Arbhavi and Yamkanmardi constituencies comfortably for the last few years. No leader can match them when it comes to facing elections,'' says K. Ravi, a family friend of the Jarkiholis.
Interestingly, BJP MLA Balachandra Jarkiholi and BJP leader Bheemshi Jarkiholi remained absent from a programme organised by the state BJP leadership to welcome Pujari into the party on Monday. It remains to be seen how the brothers, two of whom are with Congress and two with BJP, will work out strategies for their political survival in Gokak in the coming days?
“A popular leader like Pujari is capable of changing equations in the next assembly elections,”' says a BJP leader from Gokak Raju Kalbhavi.
Many Idigas from Congress join BJP
A major chunk of Ediga community leaders in Sagar and Shivamogga taluks who were in the Congress and JD(S), joined the BJP on Thursday.
Former zilla panchayat vice president and senior Congress leader of Sagar, Bheemaneri Shivappa, joined the BJP alongwith scores of his followers. Similarly, former ZP member of JD(S) and a staunch follower of former chief minister S. Bangarappa, Mr Tejappa of Sorab joined BJP along with his supporters in Kumsi in Shivamogga taluk.
Mr Bheemaneri Shivappa was in the Congress for more than 40 years and had served as vice president of Shivamogga zilla panchayat. He was also vice president of Shivamogga District Cooperative Central Bank (DCCB). Fed up of being sidelined in the Congress, he has joined the BJP.
Mr Tejappa served as zilla panchayat member and had followed Mr Bangarappa when he changed parties. Speaking after welcoming the newcomers, Rajya Sabha MP Ayanur Manjunath said the BJP was not in politics only to gain power. It had its own ideology and principles for nation building, he said.
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