State of play: One Yogi down, but Siddaramaiah still has BJP to beat
Whom do you believe? The politician? His tweet? The Fb post? The quick denial? Veerappa Moily’s bombshell about the PWD minister Mahadevappa was quickly withdrawn but he’d got his point across – his son Harsha was being denied a ticket to Karkala because money had changed hands!. The story, unverified like everything else has all the drama of a backroom manouevre that went belly up.
Here’s why. Former chief minister and eminence grise Veerappa Moily exited Karkala several decades ago and moved to Chikkaballapura where he succeeded in giving his electoral prospects a huge boost, buoyed by support from even JD(S) and from across the border, by getting the backing of the Andhra strongman YSR Reddy whose hold over Hyderabad Karnataka is legion.
Did he believe that after all these years of being absent from his home base, he – or for that matter, his son – would be able to win Karkala?
And there’s the nub, the larger, broader argument. If Mr Moily – or any of the old guard - want to throw their sons and daughters into the electoral churn, they, like the rest of the old guard, will come up against the newfound Congress mantra – winnability. Not family. Not old ties. Not friendships. Karnataka is the last Congress bastion of any import left among the paltry collection of four states – barring Punjab, of course - where it currently rules as against the BJP’s mammoth 21 of 31 Indian states.
Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and his band of men, albeit many new Congressmen, whom he has tasked to stop the BJP behemoth from sweeping up this southern state have done their homework. In Karkala, it is Mahadevappa’s pick, a man with 30 years of his nose to the grindstone who can be expected to deliver the seat. Not a newbie.
The Old Guard versus the New is a story that has been playing out ever since Rahul Gandhi was pushed to taking over the party’s reins. There’s anger in the party ranks over the fast diminishing Congress base in Uttar Pradesh, made worse when the party follows the advice of the likes of Raj Babbar, and that the party should have withdrawn candidates in the Gorakhpur and Phulpur when the SP-BSP came together rather than eat into the OBC-Dalit vote. Especially when your candidate stood no chance at all.
In the case of Mallikarjun Kharge’s son Priyank, and others like Dinesh Gundurao, they have earned their electoral chops by working their constituencies and keeping their communication lines open with their vote base. One isn’t quite sure whether this applies to all the other inheritors staking a claim to their fathers’ legacy. The posters coming up all over this city a definite indicator of who wants what.
Contrast this with what is one hearing from the Chief Minister’s camp that Siddaramaiah is, in fact, deeply reluctant to field his own son in this electoral bout. He lost his elder son and right hand a year ago and needs to ensure that the BJP, which is throwing everything it has into trying to defeat him in his own constituency, does not succeed in its plans. And while he looks after the state, he needs someone reliable – his second son – to look after his constituency.
The whispered conversation between Siddaramaiah and Rahul Gandhi when he was here on his last visit supposedly had the Congress president cautioning the chief minister against over-confidence. A conversation that sounded very similar to the one between Sonia Gandhi and Aroon Purie, the head of publishing house India Today, where she says they are confident but not over-confident about Karnataka.
Internal surveys conducted by the Congress are not overly optimistic, and accept that its an uphill battle, given the BJP’s ability to mobilize votes and consolidate the Hindu vote against a party that the saffronists have dubbed appeases minorities – aka Muslims. Here too Sonia’s comment about the party having more Hindus than Muslims and her blistering attack at the party plenary is a signal that the Congress is aware it must protect its flanks.
Fact is, the seat distribution in Congress is all but done and dusted with almost every minister and sitting MLA cleared to re-contest, and insiders saying that nearly 135-140 seats have already been decided. There is the matter of what the party is going to do about the JD(S) rebels. And the question mark it has put over sitting MLAs who won by very slim margins last time, that is by less than a margin of 5,000 -10,000 – 15,000 votes, and of course, those who lost with equally small margins. One hears that the only exception to this rule is the KPCC president G. Paramewshar who lost by 35,000 votes. The Congress strategy is to ensure it wins a minimum of at least 125 seats. The pressure is on, and all MLAs have been sent back to their constituencies to plug every hole and address every grievance. With speculation rife that the Election Commission could announce polls by the middle of next week, either by March 21 or March 22, and set the dates for polling in the first week of May, as early as May 6 even, time is of the essence.
Clearly, the heat is on. Elections are round the corner and its open season as everyone scrambles for a piece of the pie, crumbs and all. That’s probably why the twitter war is going to get down and dirty. In the Telugu-speaking belt all the way from Ballari to Chickallapur, after the TDP broke ranks and quit the NDA alliance, a whatsapp message is now urging the community not to vote the BJP!
One doesn’t quite know what the BJP’s septuagenarian leader B.S. Yeddyurappa – not a millennial - was trying with his post that there would be a spectacular anouncement, except none came. Was he testing the waters to see if he had a twitter following like the Prime Minister Narendra Modi? Or did he really have some dirt on the chief minister, that we knew nothing about? Or was he just trying to pre-empt his arch rival, who had already shaken his Lingayat roost by playing the Lingayat card, from pandering to Kannada pride with a flag march on March 21, where Karnataka’s new flag will be aired!!
Siddaramaiah’s salvo to Yogi Adityanath when the Gorakhpurpeeth fell to the Samajwadis telling him to stay out of Karnataka, underlined Congress' concerns over retaining its last southern redoubt. Perhaps, they should take comfort from the whispers in Lucknow that Yogi – a Thakur - was deliberately cut to size? Why would he field a Brahmin in a predominantly Thakur constituency, when the poll czar Amit Shah must have known he would be cold-shouldered. The low voter turnout on Sunday had me wondering what was up. It was only when the results came in, and the scale of the defeat became obvious, that one realized the bigger game – Modi wasn’t ready to anoint anyone as his successor. Least of all, a man who snatched UP from under his nose. For now, Yogi Adityanath, the man who whips up communal passions, is back in the box. Perhaps, Siddaramaiah can take comfort from that...
