A chief minister who invited controversy by flaunting his Rs 70-lakh watch, a minister caught with his pants down, another accused of driving a senior cop to suicide and yet another found browsing obscene pictures on his phone. Add to that successive judicial setbacks in interstate water disputes, the resultant riots and a worsening farm crisis. If the year gone by was bad for many, it was nothing short of a disaster for the ruling Congress in Karnataka. And talking of troubles, there’s more to come.
With the crippling drought of 2015 casting its shadow on the following year, the Congress government began 2016 on a troubled note -- clueless on how to deal with mounting farmer suicides and besieged by persistent inner-party squabbles. Controversies followed one after the other, almost relentlessly, starting with a political slugfest over Chief Minister Siddaramaiah’s Hublot watch.The chief minister survived the political crisis that nearly cost him his job by giving up the watch, but his cabinet colleague and trusted associate K J George was less fortunate. Accused of abetting the suicide of a police officer, who even named him in a TV interview before hanging himself, he had to resign. That the surprisingly speedy investigation found him clean and he made a swift return to the cabinet is another matter.
Just before the year ended came 71-year-old minister H Y Meti’s rather humiliating exit after a sex tape of him made a grand debut on TV screens. Meti is a small fry in the Congress’ grand scheme of things and hence expendable, but what could be troubling the party is a threat by an activist who exposed Meti and the Opposition BJP to shame more ministers in the coming days. Whether muck on more ministers comes out or not, Siddaramaiah has an eventful year ahead, what with the Nanjangud by-election around the corner and Assembly polls due in the first half of 2018.
As of now, the focus is on Nanjangud, where a bypoll is likely sometime in February. The electoral battle in Siddaramaiah’s own backyard is also a fight for prestige and stature for the chief minister, who has made surviving political storms a habit. Standing in his way is Srinivasa Prasad, his friend who turned his bitter enemy after the veteran politician was dropped from the cabinet in June in a reshuffle that created more troubles for the Congress than it solved. Prasad quit the Congress soon after and will now seek re-election from the seat as a BJP candidate.
The support of the dependable Dalit votebank and the BJP branding make Prasad a tough challenger to Siddaramaiah’s once-formidable clout in the region. The chief minister has everything to lose, so he must ensure that the Congress wins. The BJP has never won in Nanjangud, and Prasad probably is its best bet. For Prasad, a win could mean continued political relevance, and a loss is his door to certain obscurity. Political troubles aside, there’s lot more on Siddaramaiah’s plate this year. The second straight drought year in the state is a factor which, coupled with the impact of demonetisation, could give him sleepless nights in the days ahead.
As many as 1,461 farmers committed suicide in 2015-16, and the numbers are likely to be high this year too. With demonetisation eating into whatever little they reaped from their barren fields, small-time farmers are desperate. In this situation, the Congress may find it difficult to regain the lost ground before elections are called again in about a year.
The BJP sees an opportunity to return to power, but many fights within could play spoilsport. B S Yeddyurappa is firmly in charge and driving the party’s mission to win 150 seats (out of 224) in 2018, but not all in the party are cheering for him. K S Eshwarappa, a senior leader who has been deputy chief minister, is suspicious of his intentions. Wary of being sidelined, Eshwarappa launched a forum named after the 18th-century warrior Sangolli Rayanna in an attempt to rally backward castes and Dalits around him and emerge as a strong force within the party.
With Yeddyurappa having none of it, the party will have to take a call on Eshwarappa sooner than later. Yeddyurappa’s way of running the party, which many say borders on authoritarianism, too has not gone down well with many seniors. The BJP is a divided house but what’s making various groups stick together is their common goal of electoral victory. The divisions cost the BJP dearly in 2008, and how it manages the internal contradictions in the coming year will decide its fate in 2018.
The JD(S), being aggressively led by the seemingly tireless H D Kumaraswamy, could gain from the troubles of the BJP and the Congress. No that the JD(S) is a political force that could come to power on its own — it has neither the spread, nor the wherewithal. But any electoral gains could put the party in a position from where it can dictate terms. The father-son duo of Deve Gowda and Kumaraswamy will want nothing better.
Kiran Prakash
Resident Editor, Karnataka
Email: kiranprakash@newindianexpress.com