Change of Guard

The Congress wins a simple majority and the JDS rivals the BJP for second place, bringing an end to the saffron party’s vigilantism and its love of gods and godmen

BANGALORE ~ The Karnatka electorate has given a fitting send off to the Bharatiya Janata Party’s first government in the south, and handed the Congress the slim- mest of majorities, despite a resounding performance by the Janata Dal-Secular that surprised many.

The Congress has secured a working majority and is in a position to form a government on its own. It has managed to erase the nightmare of May 2008, when the BJP fell a handful of votes short of the halfway mark and gathered independents to form a government, poaching MLAs from other parties to stabilise its numbers with the help of the cash-rich Bellary brothers led by Gali Janardhan Reddy, marking a new low in Karnataka politics.

Today, the BJP’s corruption-tainted government, filled with internal bickering, has led to an exhaustive electoral rout of the saffron party. The party’s bad days began with the Lokayukta mining report of 2011, which led to BS Yeddyurappa stepping down, and to the fall of the once-invincible Reddy brothers, with Janardhan Reddy arrested for being hand-in-glove with Jaganmohan Reddy, son of erstwhile Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister YSR Reddy. Bellary, the epicentre of dirty money, resembles a shattered empire. With Janardhan in jail, brother Karunakar Reddy kept trying his luck with the BJP, but he and the brothers’ right hand man B Sriramulu, who floated the BSR Congress, have tumbled hard from their once powerful position.

The BJP had announced Jagadish Shettar as its candidate for Chief Minister, but it’s clear he had neither the ability nor the charisma to lead the party after Yeddyurappa walked out and floated his own outfit—the Karnataka Janata Paksha. Yeddyurappa and five others have won seats for his newly formed party.

Damage control came too late for the BJP, but it still managed to win some 40 seats—down from 111 in 2008. At a first glance of the results, it seems that the Lingayat vote, close to 20 per cent of the total, has been split between the BJP, the Congress and the KJP. All the money paid to Lingayat muths and temples by the three CMs who held power during the term of the BJP-led state government, totalling Rs 150 crore in budgetary allocations and grants, has not had much effect for the party. The government, rabidly pro-Hindutva, also handed over prime government land to institutions and organisations run by saffron affiliates. Many temples in the state were released from the control of the state endowment department as favours; conversely, many temples were brought under government control to shore up their resources by providing grants-in-aid. Such moves benefitted many small-time priests and rendered control of temples to offshoots of established muths. This practice has been frowned upon, as several fly-by-night swamijis turned rich overnight thanks to this government largesse.

The Lingayat vote, which was thought to have shifted to the Congress en bloc after party president Sonia Gandhi met with the community seer Shivakumara Swamiji on his 105th birthday last year, turned out to be a mirage; voters were split. The Congress was in any case careful not to depend entirely on Lingayat votes and was busy wooing its traditional Backward and minority supporters. It even appealed to Brahmin voters at a community forum in Bangalore, which was turned into a vote-seeking exercise by Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dixit, who was campaigning in the city last week.

The persistent moral policing by saffron vigilantes too had not gone down well with minorities and cosmopolitan voters, who seem to have voted in favour of specific Congress and JDS candidates. The Congress did extremely well at the cost of the BJP in the Mangalore region, where the VHP claimed people were proud to have it called a ‘Hindutva laboratory’. Former state BJP Chief and Deputy CM KS Eshwarappa, who spoke of ‘love jihad’ and was booked by the Election Commission for making a divisive speech, lost from Shimoga, which he saw as his personal stronghold.

In northern Karnataka, especially in Andhra-Karnataka border regions, the Centre’s act of granting the region special status via Article 371(J) may have helped the Congress gain seats. It is possible the expectation that a Congress government at the state level would result in rewards from the Centre has aided the party, admits a Congress candidate. Of course, in other parts of North Karnataka, the BJP has managed to hold its ground despite preferences shifting in favour of the Congress, which has come to power on its own in the state after a gap of nine years.

In the Mysore Vokkaliga belt, former CM and Union Minister for External Affairs SM Krishna’s failure to campaign actively—and poor party enthusiasm for him—gave the JDS an edge.

Bangalore city, important for the Congress after the BJP swept polls here in 2008, was a mixed bag, with all three parties sharing the honours. The city, known for its voter apathy despite local organisations urging residents to make each vote count, recorded a low turnout, giving the impression that it has been taken over by outsiders who neither vote in state/local elections nor participate in the city’s development.

The BJP has tom-tommed the fact that it did more for the state in the last five years than the Congress had ever done in 50 years. This is not entirely without truth, as Karnataka did see plenty of development in rural and semi-urban areas. In a way, it has raised expectations of the next government, a point the Congress would do well to note.

A few weeks before the Assembly polls, the BJP claimed it had been cleansed of all its corrupt elements and went on a promotional blitzkrieg. But voters were not ready to forgive the five years of political uncertainty caused by rebellions in the party, thrice aided by the Reddy brothers. Its long-running internal bickering led the party to change CMs three times in one term.

As corruption was a major issue these past five years, with 15 ministers having been forced to resign, the BJP government had shied away from appointing another Lokayukta after the resignation of the uncompromising Justice Santosh Hedge, who exposed the illegal operations of the Reddy brothers. In fact, the BJP made the Lokayukta as toothless as possible.

The BJP, knowing full well that it was on its way out, had the audacity to challenge voters with an advertisement that read: ‘Well, you will now ask us what we have done’ followed by a list of its achievements. But the average voter had evidently not forgotten the trend of big money fighting elections with no respect for any zeroes behind sums quoted, and had clearly had enough. ‘Saakappa saaku’ (enough is enough), as the Congress campaign had it.

The next few days will see the Congress working feverishly to cobble together a government with a CM acceptable to all.

Before seats were allocated, it had been wracked by infighting as candidates who did not get B forms to contest turned rebels and stood as independents—some have even won. Among the prospective candidates, Pradesh Congress Committee President G Parameshwar has lost. Siddaramaiah, a self-proclaimed front runner for CM-ship, has managed to win but not effectively contribute to the winning numbers. A third strong contender is Union Minister Mallikarjun Kharge, who was overlooked in 1999 when SM Krishna was asked to take charge, and then again in 2004 when ‘Mr Money Bags’ Dharam Singh was chosen.

Kharge, appearing on national television after the victory, asserted that he should not be made CM only on the basis of caste. “My being a Dalit should not be the reason. I am a senior party leader and foot soldier. But the decision will be taken by the High Command and I will be happy as long as they choose a good candidate,’’ he said.

The JDS, which had fallen by the wayside after Yeddyurappa won on a sympathy wave in 2008 when HD Kumaraswamy of the JDS did not hand over power to the BJP, has done remarkably well. It nearly beat the BJP to second place and has done well even in Bangalore city despite being called ‘a farmers’ party’. Under Kumaraswamy’s leadership, the party was clearly angling to be the kingmaker, but may not be able to play that role as the Congress does not need its support—nor can it join forces with the BJP, with whom sources in the know say it had struck a secret pact in case of a hung Assembly.

The verdict has clearly given the Congress an opportunity to provide clean governance and shed the corruption tag that the state earned during the past five years of BJP rule. It has five years of its own. That’s an aeon in politics.

CongresselectionsKarnataka