Of the BJP, by the BJP

The politics of pelf returns to haunt Karnataka’s ruling party

Balachandra Jarkiholi belongs to a family of politicians from Arabhavi, near Belgaum, Karnataka. In 1995, they were in the news after the police raided and shut down their alleged illicit liquor manufacturing dens. That was when the Jarkiholi patriarch took the decision to join politics; he had one son join the Congress, and another, the Janata Dal Secular (JDS). In 2008, Balachandra, who joined the JDS and had been running a sugar factory that’s been incurring losses, was elected to the Karnataka Assembly.

That was also the year that the BJP came to power for the first time in the state, and given its wafer thin majority, was on the prowl to increase its numbers in the House. Thus came Operation Lotus, which involved enticing opposition legislators with money and ministerships to resign and get re-elected on BJP tickets. In an effort the party took undisguised pride in, the BJP has now spent two years buying some MLAs to solidify its rule, and softening up others in case push came to shove. “The logic was to secure the government from internal and external threats,” says a BJP leader who played the game but does not want to be named.

But money doesn’t always buy security. Or so it now seems from all the pushing and shoving seen in the Assembly during the ‘voice vote’ of confidence in the state’s BS Yeddyurappa government on 11 October.

Balachandra’s political flip-flops illustrate why. He began with the JDS, but the Reddy brothers soon convinced him to switch over to the BJP, making him one of the first to be snared by Operation Lotus. They dangled cash bags (the figure bandied about was Rs 12 crore) and public office, and the MLA quit the Assembly to become a municipal administration minister; and in the byelection that followed, he was re-elected as a BJP man.

In all, Operation Lotus poached five MLAs from the JDS and seven from the Congress, apart from getting five independents to join the BJP—cause enough for much chest thumping within Karnataka’s ruling party. It was a staggering show of business-cum-politics, quite in keeping with the state’s new zeitgeist. After all, rich builders had paid sums of upto Rs 20 crore to get tickets for the 2008 polls, and mining barons-turned-politicians across parties had put down staggering sums on their asset declaration forms. According to an Association for Democratic Reforms study, the wealth of more than two-thirds of the state’s politicians had jumped threefold between two elections. It was politics as usual.

But then, legislators such as Balachandra had made their motivations clear, and so it was only a matter of time that higher bids for their loyalty would come along. And they did, once a rebellion started brewing within the BJP in October 2009, led by the very operators who had bought the MLAs’ loyalty in Operation Lotus. The Reddy brothers, upset that they were not getting their ‘due respect’ from Chief Minister Yeddyurappa, rounded up 50 MLAs in a bid to force the BJP to dump him for someone more pliable. The crisis was quelled only once senior BJP leader Sushma Swaraj effected a compromise.

Back then, the Reddys were under pressure from the Karnataka Lok Ayukta on their alleged illegal mining, even as they battled a hostile Andhra government on a stink raised by their mining encroachments. In the year since, their troubles seemed to have more or less eased.

But then, earlier this October, the father- son Gowda duo struck, and they struck hard. First, they charged the CM of denotifying acquired land to benefit his two sons (one of them is an MP) and son-in-law. They also accused other state ministers of corruption, presenting details that make it devilishly difficult for the CM and his cabinet colleagues to wriggle away.

Yeddyurappa had barely recovered from the allegations when the JDS swung into action, soliciting defections. It managed to grab hold of 19 MLAs: a mix of independents, former Congress and JDS members, and three BJP rebel legislators.

The Reddys, meanwhile, with their own game to play, took the chance to get a new deal with the BJP, and were cosily closeted with party MLAs at Goa’s Taj Exotica—only, they didn’t expect to be ambushed by the younger Gowda, who led a mob to the hotel and whisked 16 of them away. Gali Janardhan Reddy, who once famously said he’d never even lost a game of marbles, was simply flummoxed.

“Does he have any marbles left now?” quipped Siddaramiah, a Congress leader who couldn’t conceal his glee. His party has been a spectator, largely, to all this. But how the drama ends will depend on Congress decisions, especially with Hans Raj Bhardwaj as Governor.

AssemblyBJPKarnataka