Bengaluru: Last week, Karnataka Congress president G Parameshwara announced that 14 Ministers of Karnataka Cabinet will be campaigning for the two by-elections that Karnataka will see on 9th April.
Tuesday was the last date to file nominations for the two by-polls – in Nanjangud and Gundlupet constituencies – in the Mysore region. It is seen as a testing ground by both national parties ahead of the big one – the Assembly elections of 2018.
Why else would you need 14 ministers to oversee the campaign in a by-poll? Also, would you see so many of the state BJP camping at the constituencies, led by state president BS Yeddyurappa who has also talked of winning over former Congressman SM Krishna and getting him to campaign there?
Both are looking upon this by-poll as one of individual prestige. For Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, who hails from the region, this is a challenge to his own popularity. His former Cabinet colleague V Srinivasa Prasad, who defected to the BJP after being dropped from the Cabinet, poses a challenge to Siddaramaiah’s popularity among the SC and OBC communities (which has always been the CM’s forte).
Prasad is also looking for support from the significant Lingayat population in this constituency with Yeddyurappa – who hails from the community – campaigning aggressively.
But if there is one thing that Uttar Pradesh has taught to politicians, it is that castes don’t matter if poverty makes people look for alternatives.
Ever since the news of BJP’s thumping victory started streaming in from Uttar Pradesh, the focus has clearly turned southwards. Party national president Amit Shah has already talked about a ‘Mission 150’ (in an Assembly of 224) for Karnataka in 2018, and the ruling Congress has begun to feel the pressure.
For them, the by-poll is merely the trailer. The 2018 elections will make a huge difference to the BJP if it comes to power – considering it has not been able to win on its own in anywhere in the south.
No wonder then that the Congress is rattled. It recognises that poll results in all five States were against ruling governments. It realises that individual economic growth is a dream that has been effectively sold to the rural voters by the BJP. And it realises that it has lost on the public perception front. There are now voices asking that Digvijay Singh, AICC's Karnataka in-charge, be changed, after the bungling in Goa.
“We have done a lot of programmes, but we haven’t marketed ourselves well,” admits one of the State’s youngest ministers, Priyank Kharge. “Every party has ‘targets’ it has set its sights on, their (BJP’s) PR is huge, they are high on rhetoric. The Congress’ problem is, it’s not able to brand itself well,” he says.
BJP General Secretary CT Ravi says mood in the party is upbeat, and they have begun internal surveys on ‘winnability’ of candidates. And yes, he talks about a new Mission 224, nothing less!
“Why should we aim low? No one expected us to cross 300 in UP, even we didn’t expect it. When people come to vote for us in such large numbers, even without us asking for it, why should we under-estimate our own popularity? We will aim at 224. It’s Mission 224,” says Ravi.
But BJP has its Bellary baggage that it has been trying hard to shed – the illegal mining scam valued at over Rs 3,000 crore during just three years of its rule is not forgotten. Though the Reddy brothers and their aide Sriramulu – and even current BJP president Yeddyurappa – had been kept out in the last Assembly election, they have all been repatriated since.
In early January, Sriramulu and Yeddyurappa were closeted with key party functionaries from the district to decide on a party restructuring and strategies. Party workers, including some MPs and MLAs, were waiting outside, the meeting closed-door. Among the participants was Yeddyurappa’s confidante and MP Shoba Karandlaje.
About three hours later, running late for his next appointment at a public-do nearly 50 km away, Yeddyurappa was unrepentant about keeping people waiting. Many were quick to question – what was this oh-so-important meeting with Sriramulu and Bellary office-bearers? This was at the peak of the Yeddyurappa-Eshwarappa in-fighting in the party – when caste matters within the party had come to a head. At the time, Eshwarappa, the party’s Opposition leader in the Legislative Council, had accused Yeddyurappa of allowing only his yes-men as office-bearers at every level – taluk, district and State.
Anyone known to be close or loyal to other key leaders like Ananth Kumar or Eshwarappa was removed from party posts. Attempts to thwart Yeddyurappa’s moves had gone in vain. But over the past month, after BJP national president Amit Shah intervened, some office-bearers have changed again. “The man who was heading the Bellary unit was a Sriramulu loyalist, and previously with Sriramulu’s BSR party. He has been eased out now. We have brought back someone who has been with BJP for many years,” says an MLA.
Similarly, changes have been effected in the Kodagu and Belagavi units too. One of these changes was to remove a man who had been involved in an extra-marital affair, and the party wanted to keep a ‘moral high.’
“We want to make it clear; it won’t be a one-man show. In fact, Yeddyurappa’s say could be diminished, especially after UP. The party, led by Amit Shah, will decide candidates for 2018; so let’s not assume that everyone that Yeddyurappa promotes will get a ticket to contest,” he points out.
So is Amit Shah not a one-man show? “He has no personal agenda here. His only agenda is, party should win,” he says. Predictably enough, the party will focus its campaign on ‘public issues,’ not ‘political issues,’ he says, in an effort to wipe out Yeddyurappa’s own corruption cases from memory.
Would Yeddyurappa then still be the CM face? It has certainly been announced by Shah at an earlier gathering, but the fact that the corruption backlash (in the face of projecting Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a corruption-free messiah) could affect his chances.
Plus, the clock is ticking. Yeddyurappa will be, in February 2018, all of 75 – that magic age that Modi has said should transfer a leader from holding office to being a margdarshak. “He has already been promised the CM-ship, so the Central leadership can’t go back on that. For now,” says an office-bearer. But 2018 and 2019 are two different years and two different elections.
Budget 2017
For the Congress, the ‘ahinda’ (a Kannada acronym for the minorities, OBCs and Dalits) votebank has been the most important. Combined, this is the largest segment of the population.
Budget 2017 had a plethora of sops for this segment – and the BJP is out to counter it by trying to win over the ‘hinda’ or ‘Hindu’ voteback – the OBCs and Dalits, minus the minorities.
The backlash it seems is not very far from the corner. One of the first WhatsApp ‘forwards’ that went viral two days after the budget was presented read like this: “Rs 2,200 crore for Muslims, nothing for the majority? Rs 10 crore for Haj Bhavan, nothing for a Hindu Bhavan? Funds for Shaadi Mahals but none for Hindu marriage halls? Jobs for the unemployed minorities who return from Saudi, none for Hindus? Grants of 1.25 lakh for mutton sellers, none for vegetable sellers? Do you have no programme to offer Hindus in Karnataka? Are you using the revenue from temples to subsidise Muslims? Karnataka’s Hindus have to make ‘another’ plan for themselves.”
In the Assembly, BJP MLAs have questioned the neglect of ‘jilebi’ files – that the government turns the other way when it comes to files related to the G-L-B communities – Gowda, Lingayat, Brahmin.
Outside the Assembly too, BJP members raised questions about an increase in honorarium for Muslim priests, while alleging complete negligence of temple priests – never mind that temple priests’ remuneration had risen just last year.
The effort to consolidate the rest-of-Hindus against the minorities has begun, just as in UP. So have the WhatsApp forwards.
Money Speaks
Well, money speaks. Not the kind of money that you see being given to a voter for his ‘valuable’ vote; the kind of money that you get as grants from the Centre.
Karnataka has always been disadvantaged (and this has happened for many years) that the State is ruled by a party that’s not in power at the Centre. So funds, allotments are always given reluctantly -- and as minimally as possible. This year, drought relief of Rs 8,000 crore has been granted to Maharashtra, while Karnataka across the border, though it has reported a far more severe drought, got just Rs 1,700 crore (and not even 30 per cent of this has been released).
The red-tape gets longer, questions flow back and forth, the file reviews are unending. “There is an attempt to give the feeling that if only BJP ruled here, the money would flow faster. But I don’t think people will fall for this. Social security schemes are reaching them directly. They understand,” says Kharge. Considering that the BJP was seen as unmoved towards Karnataka’s cause when it came to the Cauvery water-sharing a few months back, this sentiment may or may not work.
UP New CM Face
The choice of a hardliner like Yogi Adityanath as UP CM, however, is being seen by the Congress as a booster for its own chances. He was not projected as the CM face, nor is he an MLA in the newly-elected Assembly. He is known for speeches that are unpalatable to the ‘ahinda’ population. And all the Congress needs are a few mistakes in UP – and these will be spelt out over and over, come campaign time.
“The Muslims are wary of the BJP, and so are Christians. They know that they could be targeted next. Similarly, other backward caste groups,” says Congress’ Veeranna Mattikatti, who headed the campaign committee in 2013. But for the saffron camp, this consolidation of ‘Ahindas’ could ensure “reverse polarization” as it seemed to have happened in Uttar Pradesh. The state that has a 19% percent Muslim today doesn’t have a single MLA among the 325 BJP and allies notched up to sweep the state.
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