The red faces at the Congress legislature party meeting in Bengaluru on Friday where instead of the 79 Congress legislators, that CLP leader Siddaramaiah had promised, only 76 showed up, was understandable. In quickly shepherding them to a resort soon after, the Congress was all but admitting, it was as near to losing the game, as never before in the history of this eight month old experiment in coalition politics, which had been meant to send out the larger signal that it could forge alliances and play junior partner for the greater good.
With potential allies like BSP leader Mayawati and Samajwadi Party's Akhilesh Yadav keeping the Congress out of Uttar Pradesh, and the Grand Old Party a bit player in the emerging “gathbandhan” under West Bengal chief minister Mamta Banerjee, as evidenced by the mega rally in Kolkata on Saturday, the Congress must signal that it will not allow its experiment in coalition politics to go belly up. The first step has been taken with the showcause notices given to rebels Ramesh Jarkiholi and Mahesh Kumthalli after Saturday's CLP meeting. But with other missing Congressmen being actively wooed by the BJP to bring down the Janata Dal(S)-Congress coalition government, it’s clear that the BJP is not backing off. Even if BJP leader B.S. Yeddyurappa is saying one thing and doing quite the other.
In fact, the Ramesh Jarkiholi-led clique, that the BJP was banking on to deliver 14-16 plus legislators to vote against the government in the 224 member Assembly, where the Congress and JD(S) with 37 MLAs, and others, together had 120, is still very much in play. With the independents withdrawing support last Tuesday, bringing numbers down to 118, the BJP is circling the Congress creaky wagon, ready to corral even half a dozen malcontents, left out of the highly ill-advised December 22 Cabinet expansion. The BJP’s unspoken strategy is not to form a BJP government under former chief minister B.S. Yeddyurappa, at all. The primary imperative of the BJP top brass has always been to keep the state of Karnataka on edge, until parliamentary polls, and ensure that while its own flock of 104 legislators don't stray into either the Congress or the JD(S) camp, the coalition government lurches from one crisis to another. Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy's government, alongside the beleaguered Congress, will then stand accused of not tending to the state’s many problems, particularly the drought in the northern districts where the BJP hopes to make its biggest killing in parliamentary polls.
It serves no-one better than the BJP, if the coalition government falls and is shown up as a failed experiment. In the run up to Parliament polls where every state will count, particularly after losing the three Hindi heartland states, the BJP cannot allow Karnataka, where it could easily mop up more than 17 of the 28 MPs it already has, to slip out of its hands.
