Siddaramaiah has a formidable twin challenge from BJP’s former CM and Lingahyat strongman BS Yeddyurappa and the Modi-Shah combine that has decimated almost all its opponents.
Karnataka’s forthcoming assembly election has not only become a challenge for political leaders of all the three major parties in the state, but also for national leaders of the Congress and BJP.
But the question remains, how a state assembly election can pose a challenge to either the Congress or BJP at the national level?
This is the first major election that Rahul Gandhi is spearheading after taking over the reins of the Congress party. For BJP, especially Prime Minister Narendra Modi and national president Amit Shah, wresting power from a firmly entrenched Congress in its last southern bastion, would provide the necessary momentum for a bigger battle in
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Chief Minister Siddaramaiah will have to prove a thing or two. He has to contend with the truism of no ruling party returning to power since 1985. Along with this three-decade-old jinx, the CM has a formidable twin challenge from BJP’s former CM and Lingahyat strongman BS Yeddyurappa and the Modi-Shah combine that has decimated almost all its opponents.
To make matters worse, the third major political player JD(S) under the indefatigable leadership of former PM HD Deve Gowda and his wily ex-CM HD Kumaraswamy has tied up with Mayawati’s BSP to become the king-maker if not the king.
What makes the contest from BSY with Modi-Shah and the well-oiled BJP-Sangh Parivar network and the Vokkalinga-Dalit partnership of JD(S)-BSP that much more intense for the Karnataka CM and the Congress is that there is little to expect from the party’s national leadership. In fact, Rahul Gandhi’s vote-gathering abilities are suspect as can be judged from the almost gleeful response from the BJP leaders notwithstanding the party’s fine performance in the Gujarat assembly polls.
If Siddaramaiah has publicly declared that this will be his last assembly election, 75-year-old BSY is in the game merely because of his adulatory following among the politically powerful Lingayat community predominant in the Northern Karnataka region and holds sway in around 100 out of the 224 assembly constituencies. For JD(S), this is possibly a do-or-die battle as the 85-year-old party supremo is well past his prime while HD Kumaraswamy is not in the pink of health having already undergone open heart and valve replacement surgeries.
That brings us back to Siddaramaiah or Siddu. Although he had been ridiculed by his political rivals as “Niddreamaiah” (he is known to be suffering from sleep apnea) due to his tendency of dozing off often, he has proved himself to be a shrewd and smart political player by his clever and tactical moves, particularly since last year.
Assiduously cultivating his AHINDA (Kannada acronym for minority, backward classes and Dalits) votebanks, Siddu has fared rather well in implementing developmental programmes and national schemes while seeing to state’s rise as the hot investment destination in the country. It fared rather well in all parameters in the recent survey conducted by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), scoring above 7 out of 10 points on most issues suggesting that there is no visible anti-incumbency sentiments against Siddu’s rule and most sections of people are generally happy with the pro-poor, farmer-friendly and populist schemes, especially the plethora of Bhagyas and Savi Ruchi or Indira Canteens.
More importantly, instead of the post-2014 electioneering practice of Modi setting the agenda by raising issues forcing the opponents to respond and catch up, it is Siddu who has been leading all the way.
He took up the cudgels for the State’s official language of Kannada when the Centre sought to impose Hindi and saw to it that Kannada signboards were back in the Namma Metro Rail stations. Going a step further, Siddu opted for a separate Kannada flag for the state as part of the Kannada identity politics knowing there is no constitutional bar.
Siddu also taunted the Centre to waive the farm loans having already waived off all cooperative agricultural loans. Even BSY, who as CM refused to bite the bullet saying he did not have currency printing machines, was silenced.
BJP’s ploy to escalate the Mahadayi issue backfired as Goa CM Manohar Parikkar refused to oblige. Modi’s attacks on corruption or the charges of “10% Commission” government did not stick as there were no serious corruption charges against Siddu or his ministers. On the contrary, CM confronted Modi with BSY’s record while in power or the meteoric business rise of Amit Shah’s son Jay Shah, the Nirav Modi scam as also why Bengaluru-based HAL was kept out of the Rafael fighter jet manufacturing in favour of the Ambani company formed hardly 15 days before the deal with France was struck.
Even as the Modi-Shah firepower failed to inflict any serious damage, Siddu’s most astute and politically shrewd move was to drive a wedge in BJP’s hold over the Lingayat community by recognising the long-pending demand for a separate religion status and according the minority religious tag to the Lingayat community. The very fact that BSY himself had signed the petition from the Akhila Bharat Veerashaiva Mahasabha along with many other BJP leaders from the community proved a red-herring.
Adding insult to injury, Siddu recognised even Veerashaivas following the teachings of 12th Century social reformer Basavanna, who is paid paeans by Modi-Shah-BSY and even Rahul. Siddu is also obviously aware of the fact that Manmohan Singh-led UPA regime has rejected the Mahasabha’s demand in the past. But this time round, the government submitted its recommendation after getting it examined by a committee headed by a retired High Court Judge Nagamohan Das, and the onus for accepting or rejecting the demand is on Modi.
Clearly, Modi has met a worthy opponent in Siddu in Karnataka. Whether Modi will still triumph or Siddu survives to have the last laugh remains to be seen.
The author is a senior journalist based in Bengaluru.
